At a time when abstention can exceed 40%, it is necessary to remember the sometimes bloody and always painful and traumatic struggle that meant achieving universal suffrage. From the second half of the 19th century, the suffrage for men gradually increased, but women had to wait a few more decades and fight hard to get it. Emmeline Pankhurst, her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, and the long list of women included in this book by name and surname, have dedicated their lives to convincing the society of their time that without women’s opinion and participation, democracy would not exist. population. In My Story, published in 1914, the chief architect of the suffrage movement gives us a detailed vision of the social and political environment of the last decades of the 19th century and 20th century England. My Own Story concludes with the outbreak of World War I and Emmeline Pankhurst calling for an end to protest activities to devote her efforts to the war. Three months before her death, Pankhurst witnessed the law in 1928 that allowed all women over the age of 21 to vote on the same terms as men.
Getting there was a long history of women’s associationism and the struggle against British parliamentarism and its staunch patriarchy. Pankhurst details how prominent figures in the politics of the time (Gladstone, Haldane, Churchill or Asquith) ignored the applicable laws and resorted to all kinds of lies to prevent women’s voting demands from being debated in Parliament.
expanding movement
However, as politicians settled into their positions, the number and strategies of suffragists increased: there were several parliamentary rebels, opposed, and several who prolong the sessions between jokes and jokes so that the suffrage proposal could not be defended. years later they had to leave the house surrounded by police and bodyguards. In 1903, Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which took over the banner of previous women’s associations and decided not to give up on her attempt to get women’s votes. The early years were spent in peaceful activism, trying to engage in dialogue with politicians and patiently waiting for them to fulfill their empty promises. In 1905, more and more women’s demonstrations began chanting in front of the British Parliament and increasingly harsh accusations by the police. Slogans such as actions, women stand up were added to the Votes for Women! and now! The book details the incredible organization of the movement, the coordination of attending and informing the annual fairs of the most remote towns, gathering from different points with precision exceeding police plans, or going out periodically in groups of twelve. When a provision is passed that prevents more than that number from approaching Parliament. As of this time, the famous Hyde Park Rally in 1908, which brought together half a million people, is the highest number of people attending a show ever in the UK.
All these efforts only made the Asquith government stubborn in its refusal to recognize women’s rights. So they too became radicalized and responded to the arrests, the brutality of the police, the horrors of force-feeding, and the ridicule of the press with an escalation of violence, turning politicians’ official outings into a nightmare. Suffragettes smashed windows and shop windows en masse, burned mailboxes, set fire to empty buildings, and poured acid on the pristine golf courses where the privileged classes spent their leisure time. But they don’t endanger anyone’s life but their own.
poverty and the vote
It is not possible to describe the details of My Story and the adventures of these women who believed in their rights as citizens. Pankhurst attributes her activism to the extreme poverty and abuse she witnessed as a Poor Act inspector in the 1890s: widows were not entitled to a pension, but neither were they entitled to a job that would guarantee their old age. mothers were legally responsible for their children’s welfare, giving them no means to achieve this, many were jailed and their children taken to containers for starving them or keeping them living in unsanitary conditions.
Pankhurst firmly believed that only voting could give women’s rights a voice, that only electing their representatives would make them heard in Parliament. Clara Campoamor confirmed this by voting for Spanish women from Hemicycle in 1931.
Source: Informacion
