32 B. Harrison, Two models of feminist leadership, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and
Emmeline Pankhurst, in hisPrudent revolutionaries: portraits of British feminists between the
wars(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 17–43. See also D. Barker, Mrs
Emmeline Pankhurst, in hisProminent Edwardians(London, Allen & Unwin, 1969), pp.
174–245; P. Brendon, Mrs Pankhurst, in hisEminent Edwardians(London, Secker and
Warburg, 1979), pp. 131–94; M. Pugh,The march of the women: a revisionist analysis of the
campaign for women’s suffrage, 1866–1914(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000), pp.
252–83.
I am following conventional usage in applying the terms ‘militant’ and ‘constitutional’
to the tactics of the WSPU and the NUWSS respectively, while recognising that a hard-
and-fast distinction between these terms has been questioned in recent years. S. S.
Holton, Feminism and democracy: women’s suffrage and reform politics in Britain 1900–1918
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 4, notes that if ‘militancy’ involved a
preparedness to resort to extreme forms of violence, few ‘militants’ were ‘militant’ and
then only from 1912. If, on the other hand, ‘militancy’ involved a willingness to take the
issue onto the streets, then many ‘constitutionalists’ were also ‘militant’. A. Morley with
L. Stanley, The life and death of Emily Wilding Davison(London, The Women’s Press,
1988), p. 152, point out that at the local level of political activity, there is ‘no convincing
evidence’ of a divide between NUWSS and WSPU members; many women from different
organisations worked closely together over various issues. This theme is further developed
in S. S. Holton, Suffrage days: stories from the women’s suffrage movement(London,
Routledge, 1996) where the stress is upon the fluidity of membership between different
groups. It is useful if we broaden the term ‘militancy’, as K. Cowman suggests in
Engendering citizenship: the political involvement of women in Merseyside, 1890–1920,
unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, 1994, p. 238, to include a ‘breadth of
actions’ which were about challenging views of feminine behaviour rather than just law-
breaking; women sold newspapers on the street, chalked pavements to advertise meetings,
made protests at places of entertainment and in churches, we well as set fire to empty
buildings. While utilising such a broad definition of ‘militancy’, as I do in this book, it is
nevertheless also important to acknowledge that there were differences in policies and
tactics between the WSPU and NUWSS which cannot be ignored and that it was the
WSPU, in particular, that embraced law-breaking militancy. See also L. E. N. Mayhall,
Defining militancy: radical protest, the constitutional idiom, and women’s suffrage in
Britain, 1908–1909, Journal of British Studies, 39, 1994, pp. 340–71.
33 See Dangerfield,The strange death of Liberal England, pp. 121–77; R. Fulford,Votes for
women: the story of a struggle(London, Faber & Faber, 1957), pp. 298–307; A. Rosen,Rise up
women! The militant campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union 1903–1914(London,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974 ), pp. 243–5; B. Harrison,Separate spheres: the opposition to
women’s suffrage in Britain(London, Croom Helm, 1978), pp. 196–7; Brendon,Eminent
Edwardians, pp. 133–94; B. Harrison, The act of militancy, violence and the suffragettes,
1904–1914, in hisPeaceable kingdom: stability and change in modern Britain(Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1982), pp. 48 and 75; L. Garner,Stepping stones to women’s liberty: feminist
ideas in the women’s suffrage movement 1900–1918(London, Heinemann, 1984), pp. 44–60;
Harrison, Two models of feminist leadership, pp. 17–43; H. L. Smith,The British women’s
suffrage campaign 1866–1928(Harlow, Longman, 1998), pp. 82–4; Pugh,The march of the
women, pp. 252–83.
34 See, for example, C. Rover, Women’s suffrage and party politics in Britain 1866–1914
(London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967); A. Raeburn, The militant suffragettes(London,
Michael Joseph, 1973); D. Atkinson, Suffragettes(Museum of London, 1988); M. Vicinus,
Male space and women’s bodies: the suffragette movement in her Independent women:
work and community for single women 1860–1920(London, Virago, 1985), pp. 247–80; S.
K. Kent, Sex and suffrage in Britain 1860–1914(New Jersey, Princeton University Press,
1987); D. Atkinson, The suffragettes in pictures(Stroud, Sutton Publishing, 1996); C. R.
NOTES