When will women get the vote?

With it being census time it's somehow fitting to look back one hundred years to the 1911 census that was subject to a controversial boycott by the Suffragettes. Writing comments like “If I am intelligent enough to fill in this paper, I am intelligent enough to put a cross on a voting paper” or “No votes for women, no census” thousands of activists for women's suffrage protested the census.

My favourite story of the year is, of course, that of Emily Wilding Davison who, census night, hid herself in a House of Commons cupboard so she could legally say she resided in Parliament on the census form. Emily famously died two years later under the hooves of the King's horse.


Many struggles for women's equality have not been won but we do generally accept that women did win the vote and we don't want to go back. I don't think that's controversial is it?


So I was interested to read that in Saudi Arabia they've decided that they aren't quite prepared for women to be voting - literally. There are municipal elections due in Saudi next month and women were scheduled to be able to vote for the first time. Sadly this is not to be.


"We are not ready for the participation of women in these municipal elections," said the head of the electoral committee Abdulrahman al-Dahmash, while at the same time renewing promises that authorities would allow women to take part "in the next ballot."

He said that "Participation of women in elections took place in most advance countries gradually," which does not explain why no women will be allowed to stand or vote in these elections. There were steps along the way to, for example, equalising the age of suffrage between men and women but the first step was not cancelling the right to vote at all.

Considering Saudi troops are currently in Bahrain  keeping the democratic forces down there it seems of a piece that they should postpone any democratic reform at home too. Indeed recent decrees in the last two weeks have declared that anyone criticising senior clerics are to be 'untouchable' and must be severely punished and protests have been banned.


For most of us in this country we see votes for women as an established fact, yet in many parts of the world governments that are our business partners and friends deny the people even this basic democratic right. Of course in Saudi women can't drive let alone vote but there are nascent movements for women's equality and for democratic reform. 

Caught between the inspiration of the uprisings around the Arab world and fear of their repressive government those movements must feel themselves on the cliff edge, unsure whether to jump off and fly, or perhaps hurtle to ground.

Sex Workers' and self organisation

In this next installment of the ABC of feminism we have a guest post from Jane Watkinson who takes a look at some of the history of how sex workers have collectively organised to protect their rights.

The sex workers’ movement really took off in the 1970s as sex workers’ within Lyon, France occupied churches in protest against police corruption and treatment against sex workers. The direct action received international coverage, propelled the French Collective of Prostitutes and the English Collective of Prostitutes to form, as well as assisting with the development of many other sex workers’ organisations and collectives around the world.

Whilst sex workers’ organisation has existed for many years, the ‘prostitutes’ right movement’ came into its own in the 1970s; as the fight for sex workers’ rights to be considered with respect and seriousness became more prominent. The 1980s AIDS’ crisis was a double edged sword, as governments provided sex workers and health officials money to help sex workers gain access to preventative treatment and services such as condoms – but it also came with a reinforcement of the negative stigma associated with sex work through legitimising the view that sex workers are the ones who require mandatory testing and health surveillance, not the clients (most likely male).

Furthermore, AIDS funding for sex workers’ organisations has often been associated with an ‘exiting’ strategy. The USA only now provide funding for these organisations on the condition that they advocate for sex workers to exit the industry. This puts a strain on resources, especially given the legal situations of countries such as France where the possession of condoms can be attributed as evidence for ‘passive soliciting’. ‘Passive soliciting’ was introduced in the Domestic Security Bill in 2003 by Sarkozy and has been seen as a human rights attack, as the police often arrest sex workers based on their attitude or dress (even though dress was removed from the legal text after an amendment).

Nevertheless, not all community health organisations have suffered from these conditions. In France, the community health organisations posed in direct conflict with the social workers who took an abolitionist line. Furthermore, in Sonagachi, Kolkata, the sex workers’ AIDS organisation has over 60,000 members, with the Durbah Mahila Samanwaya Committee that runs the project even setting up a civic bank for the sex workers.

Gregory Gall documents sex workers’ organisation. He refers to the development and sophisticated progression of the movement, as the collectives and heath organisations were later complemented by the formation of trade unions for/by sex workers. Whilst Gall refers to the disappointment of sex workers’ unionisation across the world, he states that there have been relative success stories such as in the USA where Lusty Lady’s was unionised and turned into a sex workers’ cooperative. Within the UK, we have the International Union of Sex Workers; however, whilst the union has had relative success affiliated to the GMB specifically in the context of assisting lap dancers rights, it has various controversies surrounding their membership criterion that supposedly allows related groups such as pimps to join. Furthermore, there are concessions that their level of organisation has been limited – reasons for this however are hardly uncommon in regards to the sex workers’ movement at large.

There are problems with sex workers feeling ashamed because of the strong stigma attached to their work meaning they often feel unable to show their faces at protests, covering them up with masks. The laws surrounding sex work do not help with this; our own laws in the UK are a testament to this. Whilst it is legal to have commercial sexual services, there are numerous laws surrounding the industry that make it very dangerous for the sex workers involved to work. This is largely shaped by a ‘moral’ concern for keeping the ‘public’ areas ‘safe’; in consequence sex workers are given ASBOs, pushed into dark unsafe areas and prohibited to work together outside or indoors.

Internationally there are largely calls for decriminalisation of sex work where sex work would be recognised as legitimate work to be considered under existing work laws. There is a strong movements in countries such as France against state legislated brothels, especially given France’s history re brothels and the mandatory health tests that undermine sex workers’ movement and freedom. Regardless, some sex workers’ want brothels, others want designated areas so they can work on the street (managed zones, as designed by Liverpool and as ignored by the Labour government); illustrating the diversity amongst sex workers and the need to provide them space to air their views and arguments in public.

Labour were central to moving the UK closer to a prohibitionist stance. Nevertheless, there are countries such as New Zealand who have adopted a decriminalisation position (influenced by sex workers’ organisation). However, the UK have taken their influence from Sweden and its prohibitionist legal context, as women are treated as vulnerable ‘victims’ said to be in a false consciousness unaware of their experienced ‘coercion’. Sex workers’ organisation is often isolated from the feminist movement as it is polarised by these debates surrounding choice and coercion. Regardless, most feminists and researchers into sex work come to the sensible conclusion that sex workers’ are neither forced or freely choosing sex work – there is a complex mixture of both.

Whilst the sex workers’ movement has come a long way since the Lyon sex workers’ strikes, there are still many obstacles for sex workers to be given the rightful legal, cultural, social and economic recognition they deserve. There are strong moralist forces within countries such as France and the UK that dictate their policies around sex work, making it harder for sex workers to make a living.

However, sex workers’ organisation has illustrated profound resilience. The movement has developed in sophistication and whilst unionisation may not have been as successful as hoped with many unions rejecting sex work as ‘work’; there are real building blocks that sex workers can hold on to and work in correspondence to progressive forces to counteract the negative and moralistic constructions of sex workers that undermine their rights to public space and consideration.

Kate Belgrave: Women and the cuts

Continuing my series on the ABC of feminism guest posts we have this fantastic piece from Kate Belgrave who has been interviewing women up and down the country about the impact of the cuts in their area.

There are times when I wonder if being an old woman without money will be as funny as all that. It seems likely that I'll find out first-hand in the near-ish future.

Right now, I get to watch.

I'm in a room in Gateshead with about 15 older women at a Personal Growth - Take Individual Steps session (known as PG Tips here at the Tyneside women's health centre). I wouldn't describe the group, or the session, as a touchy-feely waste of public money and focus, although I
imagine George Osborne would without looking round the door. Older and sick people aren't above criticism or suspicion in these censorious times, and hell – what would I know? Perhaps George is some kind of life-science genius. Perhaps it's unfair to give a group of unwell old girls like this a free pass for sharing a pot of tea together when they could be out on all fours in the snow cleaning something. It's not like anybody else gets to enjoy life.

These women are getting on in years, though. Two or three of them are about 40. The rest are in their 50s and 60s. Faces are lined, bodies are soft, and hair is thinning and grey.

I'm sitting with them, because I wanted to talk to Newcastle women who were likely to be affected by the coalition government's cuts. I've done well on that front, if I can put it that way. A lot of the women in this room collect incapacity benefit – a means of drawing income which the Murdoch stable would have us believe is leapfrogging politics, pimping and web paedophilia to top the list of pestilent ways to source a buck. Not that these women will be sourcing income
through incapacity for long. Their days of drawing incapacity (and perhaps any) benefit are numbered. Incapacity is being phased out, along with any notion of genuine need. Everyone who collects incapacity is being assessed for fitness for work. They're being moved to the smaller job seekers' allowance, or to the employment support allowance if they're deemed to need support to work. Some will be found ineligible for support altogether.

Nobody I've spoken to likes their chances. I've even met rightwingers who are worried about assessment. Only ten days ago, I interviewed a physically disabled woman called Mel Richards who felt that the coalition (which she generally supported) was wilfully failing to recognise people she referred to as “deserving poor.” She insisted that her good work record and national insurance contributions entitled her to support when illness struck (and was technically correct – incapacity benefit recipients must generally have paid national insurance).

She'd run a campaign called “I'm Right – but cuts are wrong.” “I still believe there is such a thing as entitlement. I paid, so I was entitled. The government is not acknowledging that.”

Most of the women in this Gateshead room worked, and paid tax and national insurance, for years – 30 years at the HMRC in one case, 20 and more years at BHS in another – before age and ill-health queered the pitch, as they do. Some say they were eased, or bullied, out of jobs and/or better places in the work hierarchy and that their problems with depression set in around then. Depression sets in for me just talking about it. I've been in the workplace long enough to know how women are rated once they've past the age of sexual attractiveness
and use. Miriam O'Reilly is, alas, not the only one. She's one of the better looking.

I wonder, too, about the likelihood of employers giving these already-discarded older women a chance.

Let's take Diana Shearer, who is 51. Her last job was in IT. She was there for about 14 years. She is incontinent and suffers from severe depression: the two problems aren't unrelated. She is furious about the pressure she's under as she waits for reassessment. “Every time there's something comes through the post, I'm wondering is it going to be that letter? It's every day for me [at the moment]. How dare these people stop my benefit? Who going to decide?”

Chris Swales is probably in her 50s, but her seamed face and thick glasses make her look elderly. She worked for 30 years the public sector before she was retired for ill health. “I got a letter and a medical assessment [when I was retired] so I rang Incapacity (the DWP) and told them that I had been ill-health retired. I still had to go for a medical (she had her assessment last week, although she struggles to recall it - the other women in the room have to remind her when I ask). I'm just concerned that I'll get a letter saying that I'm not entitled to it.”

It seems highly unlikely that employers will pick these two from Newcastle's large crop of jobless. Newcastle council is due to jettison 2000 people. There will be long queues for jobs, and old, shaky women will be at the back of them. I've worked all my life, but have never made the kind of money you need for complete security today. I look at these women and see me.

NB Names of women at the Gateshead Centre have been changed – they were concerned that publicity might affect their benefit assessments. I'll upload the audio from these interviews to my site when I get back to London next week.

ABC of Feminism: women and economics

The next in my short series on the ABC of Feminism focuses on gender and economic inequality by chair of Green Party Women Natalie Bennett. She's taken the ABC thing a bit more literally than the first two pieces - but it's all good!

The A (introduction) of "women and economics" is simple and stark: men own nearly everything, women can be certainly of very little, or to put it in statistical terms, only about 1% of the world's assets are held by women. And only about 1% of the world's women have access to land - the basic foundation of survival, while 70% of the world's people living in abject poverty, on less than $1 a day, are female.

And it's not because women are lolling around, choosing the easy life. To quote The World's Women: 2010 (PDF) (a great statistical source): "In all regions, women spend at least twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work" and "when unpaid work is taken into account, women’s total work hours are longer than men’s in all regions".

So what of the B, before? Well it's not the sort of thing that was being recorded in many parts of the world until very recently, but where there are records, we know that the situation today has dramatically improved compared to the past. In Britain, it was the Married Women's Property Act of 1882 that allowed married women to own anything much more than the clothes they stood up in. It's a right (at least with regard to land) that women in, to take just one example, Swaziland, are still struggling towards.

Why? Well that's the $24,000 question I'd be answering definitively if only I could lay my hands on some cash. Many theorists posit some past golden age - a Paleolithic heaven of equality (yet modern studies suggest current such societies show a wide range of models for the sexual division of labour and status), shading into darker shadows of Neolithic child-rearing and farm work. Yet others see a worship of "Mother Earth" and mother goddess in the Neolithic, with repression arising only with more complex, and hierarchical societies.

A common everyday answer is that men are simply stronger than women, so in a world "naked in tooth and claw", they naturally come out with most of the goodies. As an answer to that read The Frailty Myth by Colette Dowling - the difference in at least potential power between men and women's bodies is minuscule.

Political and social power, however, are clearly a different issue. overwhelmingly in most of history they have been in the hands of men. why? Well the socialist/Marxist feminists will blame economic base, the radical feminists will blame patriarchy: I'm not going there today.
So what about C, change?

Clearly in the past century, women have made considerable advances in economic sphere. I was recently re-reading The Female Eunuch, and I was amazed to learn that up to the 1970s single women were regarded as a bad bet as rental tenants, their income simply was not seen as reliable. But as capitalism came to need the labour of educated middle-class women in particular, a space, and real economic opportunities became available for some.

But I'm reminded of the words of Sheila Rowbotham on her recent book tour, that in the 1970s she thought that victories once won were history, but now she understood this was only the start, and battles needed to be fought again and again.

To come close to home, just look at what's happening in the UK now with the government's savage cuts. Women, particularly poorer women, are going to suffer hugely disproportionately. As the Women's Budget Group's excellent report (PDF) outlines, lone parents are the single group worst hit in the budget and they’re overwhelmingly women (1,326,000 women to 130,000 men). The next worst-hit group are single pensioners – of whom 73% are women, who tend to be older and already poorer than male single pensioners.

But poverty, of course doesn't just relate to money. Remember those working-hour figures? The other side of the coalition's plans is the "Big Society". The state is going to step away from many services that it's now providing, and leave the community to pick up the slack. Already time-poor women are going to be asked to do more, a lot more.

Support for services such as childcare is being withdrawn. So remember Sheila Rowbotham: you don't just have to fight to win something, you have to fight to keep it too. Even if you personally have been lucky enough to have economic opportunities, there's no guarantee they're available in the future, for you, or future generations of women.

ABC of Feminism: Your body, your choice

This next piece in the ABC of Feminism series is by Haringey Green Sarah Cope, pictured here angry and shouting and at a recent NHS demonstration. Here Sarah looks at one key feminist battle ground - women's bodies.

If anyone, when asked whether or not they consider themselves to be a feminist or not, replies that they don’t think so as there really isn’t a ‘need’ for feminism anymore, I’d ask them to look at the issues around women and their bodies.

There are a myriad of issues, including the pressure on women to conform to certain standards when it comes to appearance, the over-medicalization of birth, attacks on abortion rights, the criminalisation of sex work, the condemnation of sexually active women, the low conviction rate for rape…the list is depressingly endless, and that, in part, is why I for one am a feminist.

I’m going to focus on just one of the issues here. Access to safe abortion is something we have had in this country since 1967, although the laws around access could be improved – for example, the need to obtain two doctors’ signatures is archaic and restrictive, and should be removed.

However, we are fortunate to have what women in other countries have to break the law to obtain. Indeed, it’s been reported that women in countries where abortion is illegal are just as likely to have an abortion, as there will be no shortage of people wanting to cash in on women’s desperation. However, they have to risk their lives and may face either death or imprisonment for having the temerity to attempt to take control of their own bodies.

I am seriously concerned that abortion rights will be under attack again soon, with Tory MP Nadine Dorries, who previously tried to get the time limit on abortion lowered from 24 weeks to 20 weeks, on the anti-abortion warpath again. In October, Dorries wrote on her blog:

‘If girls and women were offered counselling and information regarding other options such as, wait for it, yes, adoption. As strange as it may seem, some find that an easier option than having to deal with the consequences of a medical procedure which, somewhere in their deepest thoughts, they regard as the ending of a life.’

If any argument makes me angry, it’s this one. The idea being that going through a pregnancy and childbirth, the biggest physical and emotional thing a lot of women will ever experience, is no big deal. So let’s see, that might well involve puking every day for months, intense back and pelvic pain, extreme tiredness, and your body changing beyond recognition. Oh yes, and possibly life-threatening conditions such as eclampsia. And then there’s childbirth, which as you might have heard is a bit on the painful side (made more so by the NHS being far from up to scratch when it comes to maternity services). But that’s okay, you can just hand the baby over (no breastfeeding, I guess…) and forget about it. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

And that’s without even mentioning the effect being adopted will have on the child as it grows up. I’m sure that adoption is handled much more sensitively these days, but it’s never going to be entirely trauma-free.

I wouldn’t rely on the Lib Dems to be a moderating voice when it comes to abortion rights, either. My own MP, Lynne Featherstone – now the Equalities Minister – wrote to me a couple of years ago about abortion rights, in response to a letter I had written to her in which I expressed my concerns about the possible lowering of the time limit for abortion. Featherstone wrote that we must listen to the latest medical advice on the issue and that she wouldn’t like to see women using abortion as a form of birth control.

Wow – a woman would really have to hate herself to use a D&C as a form of birth control. “No, don’t bother using a condom – I’ll just have an abortion, like last month! I just love having my cervix dilated and my womb scraped and vacuumed!” Yes, I can just hear that conversation in bedrooms across the country. Sexy talk.

Whenever I think of the issue of abortion rights, I think back to when I was in Toronto, researching for my MA dissertation. I was in the Thomas Fisher library, looking through a box of letters from Margaret Atwood to fellow writer Gwendolyn MacEwen. One of the letters was written in a much shakier hand than usual, and reading the content it transpired that Atwood was heavily pregnant with her daughter, Jess.

She wrote of how it was affecting her and signed off by saying that there was a word in the English language for being made to have sex against your will, but there was no word for being pregnant against your will. She said that there should be, because having been pregnant, she couldn’t begin to imagine how traumatic that would be.

There is no reason why any woman should have to experience this trauma. The brilliant resurgence in feminism that we’ve seen over the last couple of years means that the moment access to safe abortion is threatened, we will be ready to fight hard to protect it. It’s just a pity that we still have to defend something that is so fundamental to our equality.

ABC of Feminism: Women's suffrage

In the first of this short series on the ABC of Feminism Louise Whittle, who blogs at HarpyMarx, writes on women’s suffrage, trade unions and the radical suffragists.

No cause can be won between dinner and tea, and most of us who were married had to work with one hand tied behind us. (Hannah Mitchell, The Hard Way Up).

Women do not want their political power to enable them to boast that they are on equal terms with the men. They want to use it for the same purpose as men – to get better conditions. Every woman in England is longing for her political freedom in order to make the lot of the worker pleasanter and to bring about reforms which are wanted. We do not want it as a mere plaything… (Selina Cooper, pictured, 1906 from Wigan Observer)

The history of the women’s suffrage movement during the 20th century has been overshadowed and dominated by the middle class suffragettes of the Pankhursts the select few, predominantly London-centric (even though Pankhursts started off the suffrage campaign based in Manchester).

What about working class women activists? Who were they? Many were active in Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. Many were campaigning around pay issues and other matters. And many of these women were active in the textile unions. Women’s suffrage wasn’t just a middle class pre-occupation, for working class women it was hand in glove with the labour movement.
Working class women trade unionists included:

Selina Cooper: textile worker from age of 10. She stood up at Labour Party conferences arguing for women’s suffrage.

Helen Silcock: She took the demand for women’s suffrage into the male dominated TUC congresses.

Sarah Reddish: She was based in Bolton, union organiser and suffragist.

Sarah Dickenson: Based in Salford, another leading Trade Union organiser.

Ada Chew: worked as a tailoress and exposed the sweated labour in her local paper. She was also a Trade Union organiser.

Women looked to the Trade Union movement, vehicles like the Women’s Trade Union Council and Women’s Trade Union League (marching, right). Petitions were organised in places like Lancashire and Blackburn. During 1900, women organised open air meetings at local guilds, Labour churches and ILP branches. They got 15,000 signatures of women cotton workers.

During the summer of 1901 woolworkers, cotton and silk workers in Cheshire organised petitions for supporting women’s suffrage. In Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire around 311,000 women (217,000 men) worked in textiles yet they were disenfranchised and therefore voiceless.

Radical suffragists rejected the aim of the traditional women’s suffrage societies led by Millicent Fawcett (National Union of Women Suffrage Societies) - a property based vote. Their demand was simple: ‘womanhood suffrage’…

Due to the coming together of radical suffragists during the 1890s, support rapidly grew, there was factory meetings, women’s suffrage motions put through union branches and trade councils.
Women suffragists encountered friction and hostility within the labour movement regarding the vote. Expectation that women were there to fulfill a function – traditional gender role as woman in the background, as Hannah Mitchell observed:

Even my Sunday leisure was gone as a wife and mother for I soon found that a lot of Socialists talk about freedom was only talk and these socialist young men expected Sunday dinners and huge teas with home made cakes potted meats and pies, exactly like their reactionary fellows.

Unfortunately groups such as the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) opposed women’s suffrage: Bourgeois fad of feminism (1884).

TUC Congress was male dominated at Congress in 1901 – suffrage motion by Helen Silcock, President of the Wigan Weavers. It was defeated. Tactics were different for 1902 Congress – Silcock seconded the motion, it was proposed by Allan Gee, Huddersfield Sec. of Wool Workers’ Union, on the national executive of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). It was defeated again.

Women’s suffrage motions (1901, 1902) were defeated at Trade Union Congress in favour of adult suffrage motions. Suffragists were accused of ‘sex prejudice’ or ‘class prejudice’…. (and to be honest, from my own political perspective, I can’t understand how fighting for basic feminist demands counter poses class. It doesn’t).

These arguments put many women in a quandary. Suffragists like Selina Cooper went to speak to a group in Tunbridge Wells and was told, not to let that class hatred and bitterness come into your heart again. The Pankhursts’ (Emmeline and Christabel) started to reject their labour movement connections and especially alienated the ILP (All belonged to the aristocracy of the Suffragettes, argued Christabel Pankhurst and Emmeline: No member of the WSPU divides her attention between suffrage and other social reforms).

Undeterred, radical suffragists carried on building the women’s suffrage movement by addressing Trade Union meetings. They asked members to be balloted on women’s suffrage. Majority support – Weavers’ union in Burnley instructed committee to bring women’s suffrage before TUC and Labour candidates supported by textile unions to introduce women’s suffrage bill if elected. This started to build up support from working class women workers – suffrage group started to shoot up. The winter of 1904-1905 4,000 people attended a meeting regarding women’s suffrage at Manchester Free Trade Hall.

The popularity of our movement gives us great hope. (Esther Roper).

The LRC Conference in 1904 passed a resolution supporting women’s suffrage but the following year conference passes an ‘adult suffrage’ motion as opposed to women’s suffrage. Not the place of the LRC to place sex first; we have to put Labour first in every case… (Harry Quelch, SDF member and Trades Council delegate)

In 1907 Labour Party conference defeated a motion on women’s suffrage. Keir Hardie spoke (as ever) in favour of it. It was in 1912 when support for women’s suffrage was eventually adopted!

Friction developed between the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union formed in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst) and the ILP. In the 1906 Cockermouth by-election, WSPU spoke but didn’t encourage the male voters to vote for Labour candidate. The Pankhursts moved to London from Manchester in 1906.

Radical suffragists didn’t support direct action of violence and arson rather they were horrified by it. They preferred, instead, to build alliances, organise within the mass organisations of the working class. While the WSPU was London-centric had no real base outside London. At peak they had 88 branches, 34 in London. Majority of membership middle-class, with no industrial base.

A procession in Feb 1907 known as the ‘Mud March’ as it saw 3-4,000 women battle and march through the mud. In June 1908, 2,000 working women marched in Manchester demanding the vote. The aims were ‘to protect their Labour, improve their wages and defend their industrial and TU interests’.

Women eventually won the vote in 1918 (and even then it was for women over 30). Why? Because of the shortage of male workers due to the First World War, therefore women were entering the job market doing traditional male jobs. It gave women more opportunities. The suffrage movement during the war was suspended though majority of the radical suffragists opposed the war. Even after women were granted the vote – it didn’t stop the radical suffragists from campaigning for other feminist demands such as equal pay, contraception, child care, child benefits (the parallels between the demands now and then!)

How will the fight for women’s suffrage be remembered?

The direct action of the Suffragettes, brought the campaign to the forefront of consciousness, along with the dogged and courageous struggles by Trade Union women activists campaigning for women’s suffrage in the labour movement. Direct action gave it public attention but was no substitute for mass organisation and building support. Direct action does have its place, and lets not forget the appalling vicious treatment women experienced while in prison (force feeding and later, the misogynistic, Cat and Mouse Act of 1913). Even though I question the tactics, I still admire the bravery and defiance of these women at a time when behaviour like this was considered ‘unladylike’ and the pressures on these women to conform to traditional gender roles were immense.

Sheila Rowbotham makes the point as well when she writes that the direct action and violence of the suffragettes was born out of despair. It must have been soul destroying and demoralising when the labour movement consistently failing (support was fragmented) to stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight for universal women’s suffrage.

Hannah Mitchell puts it in perspective when she writes: When the women began to destroy letter-boxes and set fire to churches, I could not bring myself to blame them. Those who do so, should remember the long years of peaceful propaganda, the insolence of politicians, the brutality of stewards, the indifference of the police, the prison sentences, ‘forcible feeding’ with all its horrors, The Cat and Mouse Act which repeatedly sent women back to prison, and caused many to flee from this country to some freer state.

Radical Suffragists have been written out, hidden from history of the women’s suffrage movement, no recognisable trace has been left. These anonymous and invisible women had names and political spirit, activism and courage. We remember Sylvia Pankhurst but what about Hannah Mitchell, Cissy Foley, Selina Cooper, Sarah Reddish, Sarah Dickenson and Ada Chew. It is time to remember the contribution of these committed brave working class women and to give them the lasting recognition these so deserve.

In 2011 women still have an uphill struggle for true recognition, liberation and equality.