15 Dodd, Introduction, p. 24.
16 E. S. Pankhurst, TSM, p. 221.
17 H. Kean, Searching for the past in present defeat: the construction of historical and polit-
ical identity in British feminism in the 1920s and 1930s, Women’s History Review, 3, 1994,
p. 73; J. Purvis, A ‘pair of ... infernal queens’? A reassessment of the dominant representa-
tions of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, First Wave feminists in Edwardian Britain,
Women’s History Review, 5, 1996, p. 266.
18 E. S. Pankhurst, TSM, p. 320 and her Emmeline Pankhurst, p. 93.
19 J. Craigie to David Mitchell, 2 September 1996, Author’s Collection.
20 Marcus, Introduction, p. 3. For discussion of ‘masculinist’ approaches to suffrage history
see S. S. Holton, The making of suffrage history, in Votes for women, ed. J. Purvis and S. S.
Holton (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 13–33. Holton, p. 29, draws on a 1986 paper by
M. Lake in which Lake ‘categorises as “masculinist” certain responses to the women’s
movement in Australia, where “Feminists were mocked, abused and insulted” by the press
of the day, and argues that such responses were culturally reproduced in the accounts of
the building of the nation by subsequent generations of male historians.’
21 G. Dangerfield, The strange death of Liberal England(London, MacGibbon & Kee, 1966,
first published 1935), pp. 132, 165, 130, 155–6.
22 Ibid., pp. 122, 125, 128.
23 Holton, The making of suffrage history, pp. 22, 24.
24 D. Mitchell, The fighting Pankhursts: a study in tenacity(London, Jonathan Cape, 1967), p.
339.
25 M. Pugh, The Pankhursts(Harmondsworth, Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 2001), p. 15.
26 Ibid., pp. 60, 105, 155, 161, 163, 206, 208, 404.
27 Ibid., pp. 213–14.
28 V. Thorpe and A. Marsh, Diary reveals lesbian love trysts of suffragette leaders, The
Observer, 11 June 2000.
29 Pugh, The Pankhursts, pp. 220–1; B. Winslow, Sylvia Pankhurst: sexual politics and political
activism(London, UCL Press, 1996), p. 34.
30 Three categories of thought were usually identified in ‘Second Wave Feminism’ from the
late 1960s in Western Europe and the USA – liberal feminism, socialist feminism and
radical feminism. Liberal feminism emphasises gradual, piecemeal reform as a way to gain
equal rights for women and stresses the importance of women and men working together
to attain such rights. For socialist feminism, see note 8, where I stress that socialist femi-
nism emphasises that the subordinate position of women may be attributed to both the
nature of capitalism and to the control that men exercise over women. For radical femi-
nism, on the other hand, male control over women has primacy over all other oppressions
and cannot be reduced to anything else, such as the power of capital over labour. The
distinguishing feature of women’s oppression is their oppression as women and not as
members of other social groupings, such as social class groupings. The idea of the shared
oppression that links all women leads to a strong emphasis upon sisterhood and a focus on
the similarities between women rather than their differences. Radical feminism encour-
ages a degree of separation from men, usually involving the formation of women-only
organisations or women-only communities. It is argued that the way to change sexual
oppression in a social order dominated by men is by focusing on women and putting
women first.
31 See S. Rowbotham, Hidden from history: 300 years of women’s oppression and the fight against
it(London, Pluto Press, 1973), pp. 78–82; J. Liddington and J. Norris, One hand tied behind
us: the rise of the women’s suffrage movement(London, Virago, 1978), pp. 167–9, 204–5,
252, 258; G. Lewis, Eva Gore Booth and Esther Roper: a biography(London, Pandora Press,
1988), pp. 9, 165; M. Davis, Sylvia Pankhurst: a life in radical politics(London, Pluto Press,
1999), pp. 1, 20–32.
NOTES