UK Suffragettes: Birth & Fight for Women's Voting Rights, Dispense di Inglese

Scarica UK Suffragettes: Birth & Fight for Women's Voting Rights e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The Women's Suffrage Movement The word "suffragette" was first used to describe women campaigning for the right to vote in an article in a British newspaper in 1906. At the time of Falling Angels, two-thirds of the male population could vote. Those who could not included: - men who did not own property or pay at least £10/year in rent - servants who lived with their employers - criminals - lunatics Although British women and men had been arguing for both universal and women’s suffrage since the 1860s, the movement for women’s votes accelerated when Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903 – a more radical organization than some of the earlier ones fighting for suffrage. Its slogan was "Deeds Not Words" and in fact the WSPU became more and more militant as the years went on and the British government refused to support women’s suffrage. In 1906 a Liberal government was elected to Parliament for the first time, with first Henry Campbell-Bannerman and then, in 1908, Herbert Henry Asquith as Prime Minister. Suffragettes were very hopeful that the Liberals would support them as promised in many candidates’ election campaigns. But they were to be disappointed, particularly with Asquith, a noted anti-suffragist. Even the Women’s Sunday march in Hyde Park in June 1908, in which 250,000 people shouted "Votes for Women," did not move Asquith to allow a suffrage bill to be introduced. As suffragettes became more militant, their actions and their treatment by the police became more violent. What began as women chaining themselves to railings outside the Prime Minister’s residence accelerated into window smashing, and then descended into states of riot at demonstrations – often orchestrated by police. Inevitably suffragettes were arrested for public disorder and give prison sentences of anywhere from 3 days to several months. The most notorious prison was Holloway in north London.