 Welcome to this talk on the suffragettes. We're having this discussion today, partly because it is the Santini anniversary of women gaining the right to vote and November in fact marks the first month that women or the first time that women were able to take part in a parliamentary vote for themselves for the very first time. But there's other reasons why we're looking at the suffragettes, namely because it's a movement that fought quite vorotiously and there are lessons that we can learn from how they succeeded but also lessons where perhaps mistakes were made. Rwy'n credu'n fawr iawn o'r rhagleniwyr bwysig oherwydd os bwysigfynion heddiwol yn edrych ar gyfer ingoed yn fel Llyf哦. Mae'n ddefnyddio'r cyllidau a chyflwgac ym Llyfr am mae sydd fydd yn ei fod yn ymniwr. Mae'r ster o'r Dau Gweithwyr i ddodd Corellden o'r llygau a Llyfr yn ôl y parlyd ac mae'n ei ddysgu'r cyllidau ar gyfer y glas. Rwy hynny'n hyd ym ar gwrsiau ond mae'n'r w一定idio'r ferfwyr. It is also a study of the history of the working class, like I said, looking at the tactics, looking at the ways in which reforms and other advancements for the working class have been won in the past. We should study those and learn from them so we can inform our future struggles against the capitalist state. In order to understand the vote for the suffragettes and the suffragettes we went forward for, I think we need to look at the material conditions. Why is it that it happened at this point in history? A'r hyfry'n dweud mae'n ddigono'n 1866 ar y dyfodol a'r ëI Refformí-gwiaeth mewn cyfgaredig. Yn amlŵr bobl wrth gyda rhywbeth y ballennol, a datblygu'r bwysig am draws iawn i'r bwysig. Felly hefyd efallai ei bod yn gweld y bwysig arabaethau a bod ychydig i'r bwysig ar Britten ydyma erbyn, pan oedd yn y sylfaen Marketfellow a'r datblygu i'r bwysig a phobl yn yr adael hynny. Ac mae'n dweud y ddweud ar y dyfodol y dŵr gyffredin. Efallai bod y bydd ar hyn i'r byd, mae'n ddweud o'r cyfrifiadau o'r byd yn ymddangos. Mae'n ddweud yn ymddangos o'r cyfrifiadau o'r byd o bwysig o'r byd. Mae'n ddweud o'r byd o'r byd o'r byd, oed o'r byd i'r byd. Mae'n ddweud o'r byd o bwysig o'r byd o deall, mewn na'n gwneud o'r eistedd i'r hunain sy'n fyddeithasol, sy'n dafyn bod rhaid o'r ystond i digonu i'r ffrinadau? Rhaid o'r eistedd i'r ffrinadau, oedd yma y nesaf, roedd yn eich sawl i dda maen nhw ar gyfer pancaeth nebidi. Yn ymd minsio mewn hynny, yma phobig a ddefnyddio ei gweithio. O'r ffrinadau hynny yw'r gweithi refreshingu ar yr edrych o'r 30 yma hanes i'r ghostbill hefyd. Y 93% fel ydyn nhw yn hynny'i ffrinadau We tried a vote. Showing the kind of appetite and awareness the male suffrage development had had on the women's movement. People were starting to question why it was that women didn't have the vote and starting to begin to think about action around that. The second impact that the male suffrage increase had on the movement was that a petition was launched in the same year in 1866. This was led by these bourgeois middle class women I adrwys ydy'r own hwbwynd i'r gwaith a chael wneud hwn ar hyn o gael gael gael gael gael gael gael gael. A i'r pethau gweld i gyrddwyr am ymgyrch erbyn o'r 1,500 cyfrifiadau. Mae hynny, mae'n gweithio'r parlymyniadau a ddewidio ar yr unigwyr sydd o gwybwynydd gyda'r ysgol ym mhond ymgyrchau. Gael gael 73 pethau mewn volygol. rhai soliadau, hefyd èr yw gweithredu i gael eich maen nhw i cerch gweithredu i'r ddaion yw gweithredu, efallai yw'r gweithredu cymryd i gyllidol, roedd cael eu cystadio a targets yn parlymun. Ewch yn ychawd surprising iddyn nhw, siaradau a gweld o gofyrdd ar gyfer y gyllidol a'r sgwmp iawn yma ar hyn i ddim yn ydym ni'n ymdangos i wneud. Y ddigon y bydd i wneud een gyflwyno a'r hystau'r ac yn ymddangos i'r cyfrifiadau. mae'n ei wneud o'r fawr i'r fawr yn y bydd, mae'r zeithio'r fawr yw'r fawr yn dweud i'w gael. Rydym yn dweud o'r wneud o fawr yn ddiweddol yn ei fawr o'r cyfathau a'r cyfarwyddau. Mae'n dweud o'r fawr yn dweud o'r fawr o'r fawr yn dweud o'r fawr yn dweud i'w gael. Felly, rydw i'n rai'n cael pob wnaeth ei ddweud. Rydw i'n dweud o'r fawr yn dweud o'r fawr a bod hyn yn cael eu cyfawr o'ch cyfathrwyddoedd, ond mae'n cael ei fwylltio'r fwylltio'n gyda'r ffawr. Rydyn ni'n meddwl o'r hyffordd, rydyn ni'n meddwl o'r ffawr, ac rydyn ni'n meddwl o'r fwylltio'n cyfawr o'r fwylltio'n cyfawr. Byddwn i'n ddechrau gweithio'r llwyll yn y cyfawr, yn y ddweud o'r fwylltio'n cyfawr, ac mae'r hyffordd yn ei ddweud o'u llwylltio a'r llwylltio a chynygau'r tactic o'r dweud ar gyfer cyflogu ar y ddechrau yn oed chi gilydd. Hi'n fwyaf, creu newiddau ar y cyflogu i'r d deception i gan gyd ddechrau a chynyddiaeth ydyn ni'n gynyddianneb o'r parlymu, bydd hynny mae'n hvern o'r dweud ac yn mynd i'r arweinwyr yw fawr, yn digwydd y mae'r ddweud ar yr oed i'r ddechrau. Najem yn ei wneud oedd y gallai'r cas o'r ddechrau i fod yn cymryd fforddydd. Ac ydyn nhw'n ymlaen trwy ddweud o'r hynny i'r cyfrinddŷn ac i'r cyfrinddŷfwyr. A'r cifnadau yn ymweld ar y ffordd gyda gweithio'r cyffredin Abertaethiaeth Cymru yw'r cyfrinddŷn drefden a ymweldi'r cyfrinddau quechau cyffredin? Ymweldi'r cyffredin gyda fawr aabaeth yr bwydhelwyr graf, er fawr i gael gau gwiriaf hypergrif feddwl, yw'r cyfrindd sy'n ei bwysig i'r cyfrindd yw'r cyfrinddd, er fawr i��wg yma, Mae'r bwysig, mae'r cymdeithas yn gwneud y cwmbanio y myfydlach a weithio rymreidio'r ffwrdd. Mae'n dod i'r fawr yn y ddylch o'r gynhyrchu. Felly mae'n bwysig o'r cyfr Lithuedd yma hwyaf i'w rhan o'r ffawr o ffawr o'r ffawr o'r ffawr yn ymddangos. Mae'r rhan o'r ffawr o'r ffawr yn y 1800 oed yn gweithio yma. Mae'n ddiddordeb yn unig o'r 50 yma, ac mae'n ddiddordeb yn ddiddordeb i gynnwys i'r ffawr yn Bryt. ychynig, a'r ddeddyddiau i gwybod eu pw feedingogau yng nghymru neu efoedol. Roedd ymmyr o'r ystafell yn dysgu yng Nghymru, rydyn ni'n ddim yn fath ymgyrch o ran oedol roedd i ddim yn mod i Godfyn iawn. Yn gyfynwys ymwysgol, rydyn ni'n dweud ei ddweud yng nghymru i'r ddweud? Ieddaeth efallai y gallais rydyn ni'n edrych ar gyfer y mynd i gweithloi i'r yr wyf ni, a'r cyfarfodd a hunain sy'n gyfarfoddan ymwysgol i'r greineur neu'r many of whom are responsible heads of families and some of whom in the capacity of school mistresses teach much more than the great number of male electors are not capable of a function of which every male householder is capable. I think even here early on in mill's speech you can clearly see class lines being drawn. The argument that he's putting forward isn't that all women deserve the right to vote because they're equally thinking human beings. He's putting it forward and saying well look they pay taxes, they're running businesses the same as the men so that's the reason that they should have the vote. And I think that is kind of characteristic of the movement as a whole as it starts out despite the fact that when we start seeing the suffragettes formed there is a link to the independent Labour Party and the Labour Party. There are many working class movements from women in particular but despite those things existing on the whole the argument is a very bourgeois argument to begin with. On the other hand we see some not just liberal MPs in favour of this but conservative MPs who see broadening out the franchise to propertyed women in Labour 30 as a positive thing for them. They see well those women are still of the bourgeoisie, they are still capitalist, their interests align with ours and therefore they'll vote shawing up the conservative vote. And what this again highlights for us I think is the idea that liberation struggles cannot be fought successfully unless they are fought along class lines. Here we see a clear case of the fight for women's emancipation happening in a way that would favour the conservative party, favour the bourgeois state and maintain and secure its hold on society. And so it's really important as we'll see throughout this struggle that connections are made between struggles for the emancipation of the oppressed and the fight against class society itself. And I think we've got lots of important female socialists writing on this question at the time, Eleanor Marks where's a Luxembourg and in particular Clara Zeckin who really hits the nail on the head when she says they speaking of the conservative and liberal politicians. They are not in favour of women's rights but of the rights of ladies. They do not fight for the political emancipation of the female sex but for the advancement of the interests of the middle classes. And this is something that we see right throughout this struggle for women's suffrage, in particular with the suffragettes and the emergence of them that we'll come on to in the early 1900s. But the vote especially for these politically active, politically minded middle class women becomes a kind of lightning rod for those wanting to talk about and discuss how they can change the problems that women and children face in society. And so people, these women in particular really believe that having the right to vote will allow them to A have their voices represented but B be able to make decisions that they feel much more informed and able to make. So some of the things that they think the vote will allow them to change is the fact that the working conditions for women are so dire and disgusting at this time. The sexualisation that women face in the everyday life, in the workplace, the fact that single mothers are so hard done to in the society, the existence of work houses, the slum housing, things that disproportionately affected women and children over men and they thought that having the right to vote would allow them to change these things and have a say on how policy was made. And of course some reforms are made and we'll kind of study what reforms come with the vote but of course we still see today that even just having the right to vote doesn't necessarily mean that we have representation or the ability to change those kind of things just because of a particular gender being able to vote in a parliament. So by the end of the 1800s the suffrage movement starts to sort of broaden out more people becoming aware of it, three meetings that suffragists are holding all around the country. Thank you. And we see a second petition collected notably larger than the last one so around the end of the 1800s they're gaining about 21,000 signatures on a petition for female suffrage. Again each time these bills are attempted to be presented to government but what's interesting is to contrast at the end of the 1800s how many petitions, how many signatures are on the petitions for women's suffrage compared to in the mid 1800s and the petition for male suffrage which gains six million signatures. So even though we're starting to see the suffrage movement picking up pace by the end of the 1800s as a consequence of some of these material conditions that I've already mentioned in comparison to the kind of political awareness and the development of consciousness that was happening around the desire to broaden out the franchise for male suffrage. Actually this is still quite a small number of women that are involved in this and again they're still quite restricted at the stage to the middle classes and the more bourgeois women. And it's not really until 1897 that we see the emergence of really concrete organisations emerging around the country and it's at this stage that we start to see the suffrage movement broadening out reaching out to more working class women and bringing them into the organisations and so we see the establishment of the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies and this is a kind of federal umbrella organisation that really kind of brings together and organisers for the first time lots of small organisations that have been set up around the country that have been holding meetings that have been you know holding public sort of discussions in parks soapbox speaking essentially and they bring these together under a woman called Millicent Garrett Forcer and she's a really interesting character because she sort of attempts to change society by time to tackle the capitalist and bourgeois perspective of women being like over emotional and really hysterical and so the aim of the suffragists was to create change by showing and proving the bourgeois wrong, showing these liberal and conservative MPs that women in practice were not hysterical and that could control their emotions and so their campaigns focus solely around pacifist actions for example the speaking that I've mentioned interrupting meetings, organising protests, lobbying MPs, collecting petitions and attempting to have bills read in parliament. But of course in understanding why this was unsuccessful and why it took more than 50 years for any change to occur we have to understand how consciousness develops. Of course if it was simply a case of being able to go out and convince everybody that you are correct and sort of showing them by making valid arguments then we wouldn't have sexism in existence today. We would have won that argument a long long time ago but that's not how consciousness changes. It's not simply that you have to convince everyone else who has the wrong mindset of your correct position. Correct ideas have existed for centuries and yet we haven't seen those implemented. Partly the reason for that is because it's through our material conditions, our lived experiences, the way we relate with one another that determines our mindset and the way that we think and so this attitude of the suffragists was obviously quite limited. In fact I think it's quite ironic because Militant Garrett Fawcett says of the movement that it's like a glacier, slow moving but unstoppable and I think the events of history show that to be fast because during the outbreak of war it was Garrett Fawcett and the suffragists who announced an immediate cessation of any militant tactics. They didn't support the war by any means but they completely stopped in order to support the British state and to kind of show that again they were in favour and would have been absolutely reasonable and non hysterical whether to be given the vote. So you can see how that's a problem from the suffragist movement. Now the suffragist movement included both men and women but so did the anti-suffrage movement which really starts to again develop in size and it's very large includes both men and women who are completely opposed to the idea of riding out the franchise to women. This is a movement led by a woman called Mrs Humphrey Ward who goes by that name because she thought I am a property of my husband and I want to show that. So she never ever went by her own actual name. She always referred to herself in relation to her husband in this way, makes a point about that. But the anti-suffrage movement is really important to understand because it is very large and so they kind of based on this idea that this conservative way of thinking that it's men who are the ones that are rational and can make these decisions and Humphrey Ward says constitutional, legal, financial, military and international problems were problems that only men can solve and in contrast again to the petitions of the suffragists, the anti-suffrage movement has a petition in the early 1900s that gains 250,000 signatures and I'm using these statistics just to kind of give a rough idea of the size of these movements in comparison to one another. But that's not an unsizable group of people that we're talking about and in particular this movement includes many working class women. So working class women who've seen the franchise expanded to men, seen it sort of extended to not all working class men but a few more than they had before and seeing no changes at all in their material conditions. Yes, some more people have got the vote but have their working conditions changed? No. Has their living conditions changed? No. And so they can't see there's no material connection between the benefit of having the vote and the change in their working conditions and living conditions. And so this is kind of one of the main reasons why the anti-suffrage movement is as large as it is. Those arguments aren't being made against it and in reality the vote isn't showing how it could make any real changes to people's lives. There's also some sort of quite very ultra left socialists who argue against this at the time as well who say actually look on that same basis we shouldn't argue for votes. What we should be arguing for is industrial organisation and industrial action and so they kind of oppose the vote on those grounds as well saying that it's kind of meaningless and turning away from parliamentary tactics. I'll come back to this a little bit later because this is one of the main views that Sylvia Pankhurst turns to later running her political career. So it's in 1903 that we see the emergence of the suffragettes and they begin to begin with are aligned with key figures of the labour party of the independent labour party and they have connections and links to leaders of the labour movement and the working class movement and it's kind of established as a women's only party to begin with. I think there's a bit of kind of egotism coming through with Emily Pankhurst because she attempts to join the independent labour party in Manchester and they refuse her admission on the grounds of being a woman and so she this is kind of like the final straw for her setting up the suffragette party which is obviously you know kind of trying to be this women's army in a sense and they they want it to kind of be free from party politics. They want it to be free from being used as a pawn for Liberal MPs or for Conservative MPs to use when they go and campaign for in elections because they're kind of seeing this promise time and time again and when they get to parliament of course there is no accountability it's always promised for the next parliament and so they want it to be kind of free from from those party politics and it's very sort of authoritarian to begin with but they break away from the NUWSS that I mentioned earlier this umbrella organisation because they they want it the organisation to be kind of more militant they want it to be sort of separate from any of the party politics that might water down their message and so they begin with quite similar tactics to the the suffragists to begin with going along to meetings interrupting heckling MPs shouting out questions when is women when are women going to vote they create massive banners and drop them from like the ballast raids at meetings and things all like quite pacifist very similar to the suffragists but they split away from the suffragist movement and Emily Pankhurst releases a statement when they split away and I think it's quite interesting to look at she says we don't we do not believe in the effectiveness of the ordinary suffrage organisation the WFPU is not hampered by a complexity of rules we have no constitutional bylaws nothing to be amended or tinkered with or quarrelled over at a general meeting in fact we have no general meeting no business sessions no elections of officers the WFPU is simply a suffrage army in the field and and so in comparison to the suffragist movement that is this quite broad organisation that has lots of different organisations within it all with their own internal democracies including some kind of women's trade unions and working class movements the suffrage organisation is very authoritarian there's no room for internal discussion there's no way for ordinary members to kind of contribute to the leading line of the suffragettes or the tactics that they take and this authoritarian approach only deepens as the struggle continues and goes forward. They begin very quickly to step up their campaigns and the suffragettes actually run some really interesting tactics which they draw from the Irish nationalist so they're kind of struggle for Irish independence that's going on that runs sort of parallel to the suffragette and the suffragist movement is really interesting to look at so one of the tactics used by the Irish nationalists is going on to by elections and campaigning against people running without them having home rule as part of their platform and the suffragettes really take this on board and they have a series of successful by elections at which they are attending and they're lobbying and they're holding meetings where they they prevent some conservative MPs and in some cases liberal MPs from returning to their seats on the grounds that they were against women's suffrage and obviously this is a really good tactic for sort of raising awareness but it doesn't put any meaningful pressure on the government but there's still there's still a backlash a backlash from this and so I've mentioned that most of this in fact all of this at this stage in the early 1900s all of this action is actually peaceful it's all legal it's all within the law and yet there is still massive police repression against the women who are trying to take these petitions to parliament and by taking them to parliament I literally mean walking in blocks of 20 to the to the stranger's door in order to physically present their bill to the parliament to be heard so it's all very peaceful but the police are beginning to arrest women on a massive scale they use very brutal tactics against them literally beating them with battans dragging them to the floor dragging them along by the hair manhandling them off and rather than this having a kind of quelling effect on the movement which I think they would have wanted so to deter women from getting involved to deter them from being a physical presence at parliament it actually further radicalized the women who were going into the most disgusting conditions in prison they were being treated like ordinary kind of like disgusting prisoners basically that they were treated awfully they were strip search they were like hosedown with freezing cold water they were denied any basic rights and they were forced to be treated not as political prisoners which they should have been legally by the state and already at this stage we see the emergence of even even like class lines in the way that the women were treated so on the one hand we see bourgeois women arrested and given a token sentence of one or two days and then released free on a consequence of the police knowing their name and on the other hand we see working class women arrested and given sentences of weeks if not months for the same crime and this crime by the way is just obstructing the police like no window smashing has started at this stage there isn't really any obstruction of the police except that the police are obstructing the women in their march to parliament and so it's very it's very harsh the oppression that we see from the government in this case and it's kind of put to the test by a woman called Lady Constance Lytton who is aware that this is starting to happen she's aware that the tactics used by the working class women are being treated differently and she puts it to the test she goes to a demonstration under the name of Jane Wharton and it's this demonstration where she's arrested and given a much longer sentence until they realise who she really is so she like tests this theory out basically and so in the first two as 19 the early 1900s progress we see more and more of women arrested until 1907 where in just two months 130 women are sent to prison simply for walking to parliament essentially and carrying a bill under this obstructing police and we see you know by this stage a liberal government in power and Askwith really plays a very negative role in terms of promising these votes and consistently failing to even have the idea of votes for women like debated in parliament and this causes a lot of frustration amongst the movement both for suffragists and for suffragettes who are thick and tired of campaigning for liberal MPs or lobbying them and having the promises rejected and defeated at every turn and I think to kind of highlight the frustration and to sort of show the role liberal MPs are playing I'm going to quote from here but Gladstone he was home secretary at the time in 1908 and and he's speaking kind of about why suffrage hasn't really gotten anywhere why it hasn't developed and he says on the question of women's suffrage experience shows that predominance of argument done is not enough to win the political day men have learned this lesson and know the necessity for demonstrating the greatness of their movements and for establishing that force majeur which accutates in arms a government for effective work this is the task before the supporters of this great movement of course it's not to be expected that women can assemble in such masses but power belongs to masses and through this power a government can be influenced into more effective action than a government will likely to undertake under present conditions now what he's talking about here is the power that workers have on mass to organise collectively against capitalists to withhold their labour and to cause real damage to to property essentially to the to the means of production he doesn't say that very clearly and also you know his attitude is that women can't do this now when we think about the suffragettes and the the predominant makeup of them that's absolutely correct they aren't workers for the most part there are many many working class women in there but not in the leadership and so these bourgeois women don't have a role to play in social production and so can't play the same role and can't use the same tactics that organised working men had used in the past so they kind of the suffragettes hear this and take it very literally and so they say right okay you think women can't organise well we're going to show you that we can organise so they plan to have a protest in Hyde Park and they think right a good number is 250,000 if we can get 250,000 women there will really show them an actual fact um a little bit bias perhaps but Emily and Panker's figures estimate that it was more than it was more than double that I think if we take it on a conservative estimate there's still a lot more than 250,000 um and so they hold this rally and unsurprisingly nothing happens um of course it radicalises lots of women it shows a kind of um desire for women's suffrage in society but it doesn't mean it's any closer to being debated in parliament um of course this is as I've mentioned because um most of these women in this organisation to begin with didn't really have a means to put the government under real pressure um so by 1910 um these promises by ask with materialising to sort of bills that are drafted there's a particular bill called the conciliation bill which is proposed which is is essentially a bill to broaden out suffrage again for men to those from 21 and over so it's it's not really aimed at opening out the franchise to women but ask with says well don't worry you'll be allowed to put an amendment towards that an amendment that will will allow women's suffrage but still for those over 30 and those who are propertyed um and so the suffragettes call a complete halt to any tactics any interrupting of meetings any protests anything like that they promise to stop marching to government and demanding to be heard by um ask with and through you know they kind of put their trust in the government and this is the last time we really see them sort of have any false hope um in the government to make any changes for them because of course this bill is defeated it goes through so many amendments that ask with basically said well it's too different from the original bill so we can't have it it's absolutely not the same um and it's at this point that I think we see a turning point in the movement for suffrage for women because um especially Emilyne Pankhurst and the leaders of the suffragettes see this is a real like final defeat they've tried every possible legal um way of engaging the social democracy and persuading them in trying to get their voices heard and every single turn they're completely defeated and and are unable to progress any further and so this is when we start to see the real kind of terrorist militant tactics if you like starting to be used in in very very large numbers to be quite honest um and the reason for this I think is quite sound from Emilyne Pankhurst one of the few times that I think she's very correct on this matter because she announces this change in the suffragettes um tactics as um well there's something that governments care for more than human life and that is the security of property and so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy and this is really important because that is exactly the right perspective that the government don't care about the lives of a few women who are stuck in prison they're not bothered about those people but they are bothered about protecting property and the means of production as though this is the reason why the suffragettes start attacking buildings they uh smash windows they want a huge arthing campaign they create bombs that are going off all over the country and we really see um a very very large number of these small instances of of kind of individual terrorism really right across um Britain including an island um there are suffragettes campaigning in island as well through frustration that they're not included in the home rule bill they're also not being offered suffrage in island and so there is there is um solidarity and unity right across the British Isles um and this this um kind of stepping up of militancy leads to a stepping up in response from the government and the police as well and we see the kind of well-known date um in 1910 of Black Friday which is a really uh awful but very kind of clearly organised incident where women again are marching on parliament with a with a bill with so many signatures on wanting it to be debated by the government again and they're met by not only severe beatings and and physical attacks by the police but sexual violence is deliberately used against these women um their breasts are punched repeatedly they are like dragged and molested and it's not just the police that are involved in this but ordinary male passers-by are involved and many many accounts of the women of this day say that you know it was so well organised that it can't have just come from the police this must have been a measure that was at least disgusting a back room in the government this is something that was um you know deliberately designed as a tactic against women because it was women that were involved in these protests and in these movements um and I think it's this is really important in understanding why the suffragettes are using this violence on the one hand there's that um frustration at having exhausted all possible means of trying to persuade the government and using those social democratic tactics that I mentioned earlier but also the severe police repression against them um further really radicalizes women they're sent to prison um on a mass scale they're treated horrendously and so that radicalization leads women to really want to do something material and concrete against the government in order to have their voices heard and to get the right to vote um however these policies these kind of militant policies are still largely very ineffective it's still only really causing a nuisance essentially to individual kind of um properties of individual MPs or or like wealthy members of society it doesn't attack capitalism itself therefore it doesn't cause a large enough nuisance for there to be a big kind of change from the government there and it's a it's as a consequence of this militant tactics as well that we start to see huge splits away from the um wspu from the suffragettes um I mentioned earlier about emeline pancus really quite authoritarian rule and she leaves no room for debate and many suffragettes feel that um you know just this militant tactics on their right and just serving to kind of distance their working class women away from the organisation many people question well why is smashing that window well why is bombing that house why is that going to get us the right to vote and there's not really um enough there isn't a very large attempt by the suffragette organisation itself to forge those strong links with the workers movement or with working women in particular and to have their voices and their ideas and their concerns addressed by the movement of course that um you know we should mention that there are many many other working working women's movements around this time as well but there are nowhere near the scale of the suffragettes and nowhere near the kind of attention from the police okay um so then of course we see the outbreak of war in 1914 after years sort of three or four years of really um kind of concerted militant actions really stepping up that um that militancy and the the war breaks out and along with the suffragettes the suffragettes completely stop all militant actions they direct their funds to the british government they rename their paper the suffragettes of the britania and worst of all most scandalous of all the suffragettes play a leading role in the white feather movement of shaming working class men to go and have themselves killed for the imperial war in europe um it's scandalous and of course course further splits and this is where sylvia pankerst splits away uh sylvia pankerst is a um daughter of emeline um and is a socialist from the very beginning has always argued that the suffragette movement should forge stronger links with the workers movement that they will be more united um together and so she forms the east london federation of suffragettes which plays a very militant role still throughout the war she makes these connections to the workers movement she connects and speaks at lots of different meetings of male workers as well and of course between 1911 and 14 in the run up to the war thank you in the run up to the war we see so many in practically all really key workers of the male workers going out on strike we see the dockers on strike transport workers railway workers engineers and sylvia is speaking at these meetings trying to connect these two struggles together on the basis of wanting to fundamentally change society in order to see meaningful reform so she doesn't see the vote as the panacea in the same way that many of the other suffragettes do and i think because of this sort of attitude that sylvia has and i mentioned earlier about the frustration in in parliament she kind of understandably takes i think you know not understandable in the sense that we would we would go along with that as well but understandably becomes quite ultra left and she thinks well look at the state of parliament we've been petitioning and campaigning for years it has absolutely no interest in changing the suffrage and the franchise for women and so she kind of turns away from it and says we should have nothing to do with it anymore we shouldn't we shouldn't be working or trying to convince people inside of parliament like we need to turn away and we need to complete be completely revolutionaries but not revolutionaries that work in parliament but revolutionaries that are setting up our own organisations and fighting from the outside and Lenin really criticises on this matter and he says no look you must go to where the majority of these women are still and men as well in the suffrage movement and where they are at in their consciousness and develop them from there and that means a combination of militant tactics organising and working with the workers movement to strengthen those links but also having those discussions around parliament having those discussions around how they can kind of elicit the vote in that way so there's kind of this um sort of turning point I suppose in the way that Sylvia sort of views what will happen next so the the war is broken out and she sees by 1915 well with all these material conditions that I'm going to talk about in a minute um it seems inevitable that the vote will kind of come to women after the war because they're going to broaden out suffrage for men anyway to those of 21 and over and amendment will have to be put forward on that and she says but the the real question the thing that's important here is whether or not that vote for women will be for the property over 30 or whether we campaign and argue for that to be for all women and she kind of sees again this one of the main reasons for her turning away from the suffragettes is that she sees then only wanting to go for this sort of minimum demand of just those women those property women over 30 and this is a big problem as we'll see as we move on now as a consequence of the war um many more women are involved um in in work places um they're involved in organising for the war and musician making munitions and they're involved in in like kind of like the healthcare and hospital side of it as well and so there's an argument in society that well you know women did it this was the way as the suffragettes said they've proved themselves to be rational have proved themselves to be non hysterical um but I don't think that's um a very valid argument um it doesn't it sort of takes the attitude that women were like rewarded for their their helping the war effort and they've just shown their kind of um their like commitment to the British state in some or the way then they'd have maybe got the vote earlier and that's kind of that is the kind of argument that's put forward there and I think actually that's that's a very narrow way of looking at it and it's also not a correct way of looking at it because really there are many many other factors happening that ensure that the vote takes place for women at this time and then in 1928 is brought in out to all women and those things need to be looked at um so first of all um during the war there'd been huge pressure um inside Britain still but also from the front lines for men who were fighting to have the right to vote and so um about about sort of 1916 17 another conciliation bill is put forward this time arguing that um the vote should be broadened out not just for property men but for men who'd been fighting on the front lines in the war and therefore they you know they should deserve the vote and so we see um you know the material conditions changed there and this puts pressure on the government to also have to kind of consider well you know why not why not broadened out to women are we gonna are we gonna still remain maintain that sort of sexist position um but with this there's a kind of there's also a fit you know if we broadened out the franchise to all of these working class men on the front lines that's gonna tip the balance of forces too much um and so there's an idea that keeping that kind of adding women's franchise to Britain would level that out because as I mentioned earlier we're talking about women who are propertyed who are gonna vote in line um with their own class not necessarily in a way that's gonna benefit all women and so there was a belief like that conservative attitude returns of saying well yeah let's give let's give these propertyed women the vote whilst we're broadening it out for working class men because that's gonna kind of readdress that balance of power and keep the conservatives and liberals in the kind of balance that they'd had because don't forget there is an emerging labour party this time led by Keir Hardy that's that's starting to grow and develop and there's a kind of fear that they'll be unseated basically secondly women played a really large role in the workplaces as I mentioned um and this meant that they were starting to get organised really organised in the workplace for the first time and it's through the wall that trade unionism for women goes up by 160% and this is this causes a problem for the government not just because trade unionised or unionised women is an immediate threat but that combined with the global events that are happening namely with the Russian revolution does pose a threat to the British government who are afraid of something similar to the Russian revolution happening in Britain as well with organised workers workers on strike and women becoming organised too and so we really see a combination of sort of the effect of the war internal politics and also global politics impacting upon whether or not women women women are going to be given the right to vote and I think the impact of the Russian revolution is huge because it is immediately that the women are given the right to vote in these countries where the revolutions have happened and it's not just Russia it's Belarus, Estonia Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine the Crimea New Zealand that had the vote in the late 1800s and Germany of course gets it in the in 1918 so these events are also putting additional pressure on the government to do something and to make a change and so they want to keep this air of democracy that they are trying to put forward with the social democracies you know yes look we are going to give you the right to vote women have got the right to vote people will see that as a like a you know a step forward at least even if it isn't for all working class women and finally there's the threat of the suffragettes returning to their militant tactics after the war they don't want to see the suffragette violences or outrages as they called them which I think is very belittling of the tactics itself but they don't want to see a return to that and so in a way we can see the granting of the broadening of the franchise to women is a kind of way of quelling the very kind of petty bourgeois anarchist nature of the leaders of the suffragettes who you know with that attitude of deeds not words trying to create a kind of political storm but not really doing anything to reach out to the labour movement and galvanize real like properly at all women the working class women so they have this very kind of anarchist petty bourgeois nature and so by giving those women the leadership the vote they're going to quell that and prevent any more really militant actions from taking place and starting up again after the war and so these are kind of the sort of main conditions that lead to the vote being granted in 1918 and so we see that broadening out of the vote for men and also the inclusion of some women those property women over the age of 30 now in reality that's very very few women I just want to use some statistics again to kind of highlight who that really meant so women over the age of 30 it would have enfranchised 793,000 women women who weren't able to vote but still over the age of 21 just under 2.7 million women so the actual granting of the franchise didn't really include very many women to begin with and it was those the more bourgeois women that were the ones that benefited from this so the lessons we can learn from this I think are really important I mean first of all it highlights the limitations of the bourgeois democracies and what can be won through fighting for reforms it wasn't all women that were given the right to vote at this stage and that's very limiting and we have to be aware of that but also it wasn't the panacea that many women hoped it to be so women that were campaigning around the vote as a real lightning rod for change yes there were some reforms that came shortly after the franchise was broadened out for example there were some improvements in care for pregnant women in maternity care for women after that there were pensions established for widowed women so that there were a few of women in work houses as a consequence of men dying but these are quite small in terms of what really what the change that we really wanted to see and by no means was a quality achieved just through women having the franchise and that highlights to us again how you can have representation within capitalism you can have women represented you can have female MPs but they're not necessarily going to change the material conditions and the reality for working women on account of them being of the same of the same gender essentially and so even today despite women having to vote and equality in law we still see vast inequality between the lives of working women and men essentially and these things are you know we're still fighting for reforms that will kind of improve the lives of working women we're still fighting to eradicate sexism none of these things have been achieved through the vote and the campaign for the vote itself kind of shows you and develops the consciousness of many many women who went through that struggle to that understanding it links back to what I said at the start really that reforms even the simple idea of women having the right to vote not necessarily meaning any kind of change in terms of like money spent on women nothing fundamentally changed in government even this reform had to be fought for hand over hand they really did fight for this and the militant tactics and the amount of prison time that women were kind of exposed to and put under is vast and I've not even had a chance to mention the kind of vital tactics that were used against women for example the torturous effects of force feeding and so you know this is a lesson because if we're looking to change society we can't just continue to fight for reforms in this piece we all make firstly those reforms are things that we'll always be fighting for and secondly even the smallest things have to be really hard fought for I think we can also learn that violent tactics that were used by the suffragettes had a negative effect on many working women who saw a. the vote as not being meaningful enough but b. were turned away by those actions and didn't want to be involved in something like that and finally we come to the idea we return to the idea that liberation struggles cannot be fought simply on the grounds of trying to eradicate oppression for a an oppressed group on their own unless that is tied in with the fight against capitalism and the fight against class society then it's working women or the workers of that movement that are going to be left out or not able to see any real meaningful change if they're not included in that movement and so I want to just return to a quote by Sylvia Pankers to finish because I think this really sums up the kind of way forward and what it is that we're actually fighting for she says of herself I want it to rouse these women of the submerged masses to be not merely the argument for more fortunate people but to be fighters on their own account despising mere platitudes and catch cries revolting against the hideous conditions about them and demanding for themselves and their families a full share in the benefits of civilization and progress and this is clearly the fight that still has to be had on our hands we don't want mere platitudes we don't want a kind of veiled attempt to include us in the social democracies we want the full benefits we want the full products of civilization and the work that goes on and I think the only way that that will actually be achieved is by the women's movement and the workers movement uniting in their fight against capitalism and against class society and this is the only way forward thank you