Reflections on Two Speeches by Emmeline Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) 

photographed in 1913

'I am by nature a law-abiding person - one hating violence, hating disorder - but from the moment 

we began our militant agitation to this day, I have felt absolutely guiltless. 

For in Great Britain there is no other way ...'

 

 

I. 

 

For some reason, the figure of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst continues to haunt my imagination [1]. 

 

And so I thought I would take a look at a couple of her speeches, both from 1913, and perhaps find a clue as to why I find her so unsympathetic (although, actually, I know precisely what it is that irritates: her self-righteous moral and political idealism; i.e., her fascism with a human face, as BHL might say). 

 

 

II. 

 

Freedom or Death [2]

 

In a famous speech given in the United States in 1913, Emmeline Pankhurst identifies herself as a revolutionary and a soldier on the field of battle, waging civil war on behalf of women.

 

She wishes to make it clear to her American audience that she is not merely a spokesperson or an advocate - that the time for talking has been surpassed by a time for action: Deeds Not Words is the suffragette motto and if her deeds make her a dangerous person in the eyes of the authorities, well, she seems to revel in that.

 

Forced to choose between two evils - either having to "submit indefinitely to an unjust state of affairs" or rise up and adopt violent methods - Pankhurst chose the latter on the grounds that political (and maternal) history shows which option is most effective: 

"You have two babies very hungry and wanting to be fed. One baby is a patient baby, and waits indefinitely until its mother is ready to feed it. The other baby is an impatient baby and cries lustily, screams and kicks [...] until it is fed. Well, we know perfectly well which baby is attended to first."

 

Pankhurst could have refused this binary and opted for neither/nor, but instead she decided that she would make more noise and be more obtrusive - be more of a big baby - than anybody else, throwing her explosive toys out of the pram.

 

Initially, she says, the term militant was was wrongly applied to her and her cohorts. But after brutal ill-treatment at the hands of men simply for asking questions in public, they were now quite willing to accept the description and begin to terrorise the nation. 

 

And if shit happens, and the non-combatants suffer as well as the combatants, well, that's okay with her; "you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs; you cannot have civil war without damage to something." 

 

Similarly, if suffragettes are killed for the cause (or die whilst on hunger strike in prison), well, that's unfortunate, but might also be viewed as one way of escaping male power; for the dead cannot be enslaved or denied their rights. And whilst human life is sacred, says Pankhurst, the sacrifice of life in the name of Freedom, Justice, and Equality is the greatest thing of all and she would fight for any of these noble ideals. 

 

And so we see how moral idealism turns deadly and collapses into the black hole of fascism ... 

 

 

III.

 

Why We Are Militant [3]

 

The Freedom or Death speech, as it is known, was not the only speech that Pankhurst made whilst on her fund-raising tour of the US in 1913. Why We Are Militant was another speech that is often cited and reproduced by her admirers today.

 

It opens by taking on her critics who argue that human emancipation is an inevitable evolutionary process and that women will therefore be given the vote sooner or later, thus making the violent campaign of the suffragettes unnecessary and unjustifiable. Such critics argue that educating women and preparing them for citizenship would be time better spent than smashing shop windows, burning down churches, and sending letters bombs in the post. 

 

Pankhurst, however, rejects this argument and sees little virtue in patience. Indeed, she sees patience as "something akin to crime when our patience involves continued suffering on the part of the oppressed" and argues that political change has only come at the point of a sword, i.e., via rioting, revolution, and war - not peaceful evolution. She reminds her listeners that the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 which extended the vote first to middle class men and then the urban male working class, were passed in response to violence and the threat of still greater violence to follow.   

 

Pankhurst thereby defends the arson attacks carried out by her suffragette comrades and suggests that if half of England needs to be burned down in a single night so that she might be able to put her X on a ballot paper, then so be it. Peaceful marches and meetings were having no effect - even if on a large scale - and appeals made fell on deaf ears - violence was unfortunate, but necessary.   

 

And the right to behave in a violent manner was part and parcel of female emancipation and equality; women should be free like men to behave in a non-constitutional and criminal manner - to break heads and destroy property - when the time called for direct action. They had the human right to do so when all other available means to bring about social and political change had failed. 

 

IV.

 

So, I think it becomes clear from these speeches why I don't like Emmeline Pankhurst. 

 

During the years she, her daughters, and the rest of her gang were particularly active on the UK political scene - from the founding of the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903 until the advent of the First World War in 1914 - there was, as Foucault would say, a certain style of political discourse and a certain ethics of the intellectual [4] - a style and an ethics that justified violence in the name of certain high ideals (such as freedom and equality). 

 

This radical moral philosophy appealed to a wide variety of political ascetics, angry militants, and potential terrorists - those who may claim to act in the name of Love, but are actually motivated by hate and resentment and seem to be particularly gripped by the molecular fascism that is in us all (in our speech and our everyday actions; in our thoughts and our desires). 

 

Paraphrasing Foucault once more, I would remind those who continue to admire Pankhurst and still think that revolutionary violence is justified by some greater good, that even if what you are fighting for is noble - and even if those you oppose are base and deplorable - you do not have to terrorise in order to be militant. 

 

And, further, don't think that politics is only and always about (defending or granting) individual rights as defined in liberal humanist philosophy.  

V.

 

It's worth noting, finally, that it was Emmeline's eldest daughter Christabel who was the real black shirt of the family. It was only after she took over leadership of the WSPU that the real violence began and the group resorted to terrorism as a legitimate political tactic - much to the horror of more moderate members who either spoke out against the bombings and arson attacks. 

 

In 1913, when Emmeline gave her speeches in America, several prominent individuals left the WSPU, including Pankhurst's younger daughters, Adela and Sylvia. 

Somewhat ironically, it was only with the outbreak of war the following year that Emmeline and Christabel called an immediate halt to their militant campaign and lent their full support to the British government in the conflict with Germany. Not only that, but they encouraged all women to assist in the war effort and all men to fight for king and country - happily handing out white feathers to those who had no wish to do so.   

 

After the War ended, Emmeline became more concerned with what she perceived as the threat posed by Bolshevism and joined the Conservative Party; her daughter Christabel, along with other more radical one-time suffragettes, chose to support the British Union of Fascists [5].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I have recently published two posts on Pankhurst and the insufferable suffragettes and their far-right political affiliations: click here and here. 

 

[2] This speech was delivered in Hartford, Connecticut on 13 November, 1913. It can easily be found in full online. An edited version was also reproduced in The Guardian (27 April 2007) as part of a series of great speeches of the 20th century: click here.     

 

[3] This speech is also from the US tour of 1913 and can also be found easily enough online: click here, for example. 

[4] See Michel Foucault's preface to Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus, trans Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, (The Athlone Press, 1994), pp. xi-xiv. 

[5] Again, see the post 'On Suffragettes and the British Union of Fascists' (17 Feb 2024): click here. 

On Suffragettes and the British Union of Fascists

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Having received a number of emails from readers responding to my last post on Sadiq Khan and the Suffragettes - most of which expressed shock and disappointment to discover that the latter were more than happy to use violent means to achieve their political ends - I thought it might be interesting to say a bit more about these insufferable women to whom history has granted heroic victim status [2]. 

 

Deeds Not Words - this is the slogan of many an ascetic militant or armed revolutionary. And it usually means that someone somewhere is about to be shot, blown up, stabbed, or beheaded in the name of some higher cause or greater good. In other words, such murderous actions are justifiable when they are committed in the name of freedom, justice, or God, for example. 

 

In addition to smashing shop windows and setting fire to all kind of buildings, including theatres and churches, not just government offices, the suffragettes were also prepared to kill politicians, judges, and members of the public. In 1912, one of these deranged harpies even threw an axe at then Prime Minister Herbert Asquith (it missed him, but injured another MP, almost slicing off his ear) [3]. 

 

If only a handful of people were actually killed as a result of the suffragette terror campaign, there were dozens severely injured. But that's not really the issue: the issue is whether such violence can ever be acceptable [4]. I don't mind if someone answers yes to this question, but then I don't expect them to complain about the violence that invariably befalls them or start squawking about their human rights. 

 

If you live by the sword ...

 

 

II. 

 

The fact is, Pankhurst, her daughter Christabel, and the rest of her criminal gang, essentially revelled in the violence and the chaos caused - dismissing those women who called for patience and peaceful protest. It's little wonder, therefore - and this too will come as a shock to some readers - that many of the most militant suffragettes eventually drifted into the sweaty embrace of the black-shirted strongmen of the British Union of Fascists ...  

As the British historian Martin Pugh points out [5], Oswald Mosley's paramilitary movement drew all kinds of cranks and crackpots, including Mary Richardson, the former suffragette notorious for slashing The Rokeby Venus in 1914, who ran the Women's Section of the BUF (est. 1933), after Mosley's mother gave up the role.

 

When asked what attracted her to Mosley and the BUF, Miss Richardson explained that she saw in the Blackshirts the same courage, dedication, and loyalty that she had known in the Women's Social and Political Union. The fact that the BUF were ultranationalists who wanted to make Britain great again and keep Britain for the British, also appealed to her extreme brand of patriotism.         

In the interwar period, votes for women was no longer the burning issue it once was for women like Richardson and Christabel Pankhurst [6]. In fact, they now repudiated the entire parliamentary system and advocated total obedience to a supreme leader. They also regarded feminism as a form of decadence and openly sneered at women such as Nancy Astor, the first female member of Parliament.

For these women in their black blouses, black berets, and grey skirts it was fascism which uniquely offered a true form of feminism and promised an escape from the twin evils of domesticity and democracy and they enthusiastically gave the BUF their full support.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This image was used to illustrate an article by Martin Pugh entitled 'Why Former Suffragettes Flocked to Fascism' (14 April 2017), in the online magazine Slate: click here. The article was excerpted from Pugh's book Hurrah for the Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars, (Pimlico, 2006).

 

[2] There are even memorial statues of Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (1903), in London and Manchester. 

[3] Readers might also find it interesting to know that future PM Winston Churchill was also assaulted by a suffragette using a horse-whip, whilst on a platform of Bristol railway station, in November 1909. The woman was arrested for assault, but was simply found guilty of disturbing the peace. 

 

[4] For me, the acts of terror and political violence perpetrated by the suffragettes are objectionable on several grounds, including the fact that they betray class privilege and indifference to the suffering of those deemed social inferiors. These ghastly women simply didn't care if a policeman, or a postal worker, or a train driver, was injured or killed, because they didn't know any such people personally and were most unlikely to have family members employed in such roles.

      A bit like the Just Stop Oil protestors today, they also knew they were unlikely to be subject to the full force of the law as they came from posh backgrounds and had friends and supporters in postions of power and influence.  

 

[5] See note 1 above. I am indebted to Pugh for his published work in this area. 

 

[6] During 1916-17, the House of Commons Speaker chaired a conference on electoral reform which recommended limited women's suffrage. Then, in 1918, the Representation of the People Act was passed which allowed women over the age of 30 (who met a property qualification) to vote. Although 8.5 million women met this criteria, it was only about two-thirds of the total population of women in the UK. It was not until the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 that all women over 21 were finally able to vote. This act increased the number of women eligible to vote in UK elections to 15 million. 

 

 

For a follow-up post on two speeches by Emmeline Pankhurst, click here.  

Sadiq Khan and the Insufferable Suffragettes

A group of Suffragette terrorists pictured in 1913

 

 

That human weasel posing as London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has come up with a way to waste millions more of tax payers' money: a rebranding of six Overground lines with names said to celebrate the city's diverse history and culture. 

 

In other words, it's another attempt to impose a pernicious ideology and for Khan to virtue signal his own wokeness to the world. 

 

But there's a certain irony, of course, in naming the Gospel Oak to Barking Riverside route the Suffragette Line. 

 

For as readers who have read the history of this women's organisation from the early part of the 20th-century will know, their activism included an orchestrated bombing and arson campaign in the years 1912-14 that was described as terrorist in nature by the authorities and admitted as such by leaders of the movement, including Emmeline Pankhurst, whose daughter Christabel directed militant actions from the safety of exile in France.

 

Their radical slogan Deeds Not Words meant targeting not only government officials, but members of the public, with the aim being to make every aspect of English life insecure and unsafe. 

 

On 25 October 1912, this involved setting fire to a train carriage as it pulled into Harrow station. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in this incident - but they certainly could have been. Which is why, as I say, there's an irony in naming a train line in honour of these fanatics. 

 

One wonders if a hundred years from now they'll accord the same honour to the Islamist suicide bombers who targeted commuters travelling on London's public transport network in July 2005 ...? 

 

 

For a follow-up post to this one on the suffragettes and the the British Union of Fascists, click here. 

 

For a follow-up post on two speeches by Emmeline Pankhurst, click here.