Women's Suffragettes

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The women suffragettes in Britain made use of formal and informal political means in many ways, were the means necessary for securing their right to vote? For starters, in My Own Life, by Emmeline Pankhurst, she gives multiple examples of how she viewed the law on women's right to vote and examples of how she ameliorated it. She tells personal stories, stories from what happened in the town that she had lived in, and explained how women and their roles were viewed as unimportant or not as important as males. The tactics used by the women of this time attracted a great deal of attention to the campaign for women to vote. Suffragettes were women who were determined to win the right to vote for women by any means necessary. They were a group of …show more content…

In chapter 4 it states “Every girl child in those days wore a red flannel petticoat... we were wearing red and green-the colors of the Liberal party.... I walked the better part of a mile to the nearest polling booth. It happened to be in a rough factory district, but we did not notice that. Arriving there, we two children picked up our green skirts to show our scarlet petticoats, and brimful of importance, walked up and down before the assembled crowds to encourage the Liberal vote. From this eminence we were shortly snatched by an outraged authority in the form of a nurserymaid.” Another time the women suffragettes used an informal means to further their right to vote was one when they started the “guerilla warfare” or the letter bomb. They struck the government through its property of the postal men and the letters. This “movement” happened all over London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, and half a dozen other cities. It even went to the extent of flames, corrosive chemicals being used, and addresses being “rendered illegible by black fluids”. An estimated 5,000 letters and 1,000 others delayed in transit were affected and valuables disappeared. The women were frustrated with the lack of progress and believed it had to be drastic and more direct to catch the eyes of the men of England. Many women, from handicapped to regular …show more content…

She talks about the amendment from the House of Commons that was moved by John Stuart Mill to “include women householders as well as men” but was then defeated. The word “man” was decided to include “woman” in the amendment, but also to include women ratepayers as well as men. There are many issues around this. After this was appealed, “8,924 women, out of a total of 4,215 women voters, claimed their votes and their claim was defended in the law courts by eminent lawyers” but was settled and the agitation resulted in strengthening of the women's suffrage agitation. The prospect of the women’s suffrage bill needed to pass through the House of Commons three times to become a law, but the chances of that were slim to none. Lloyd George and Lewis Harcourt attempted to make a cabinet split. They believed that was the only way to “timidize the liberals”. The government tried many things to get the women's suffragettes' plan opposed, they were just not winning. The women in this movement have strong plans to

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