The year is 1913.
In Britain, women are burning buildings and planting bombs.
And all this for something that in 100 years' time
we'll completely take for granted -
a woman's right to a vote.
You'll have heard of the suffragettes.
You probably know the name Pankhurst,
that they chained themselves to railings,
and that one of them was trampled by a horse.
But these women did so much more than that,
resorting to outrageous criminal acts,
fighting a decade-long campaign
of escalating violence.
I'm going to show you how ordinary women
had been driven to these extremes,
and how they've become
the single most prolific home-grown
terrorist organisation this country's ever seen.
Come on, hurry!
In 2018, it's 100 years
since women, well, some of them at least,
won the right to the vote.
The story of how that really happened
is much more difficult and dangerous
than you could possibly imagine.
- Good morning, ladies.
- At the heart of that story is an organisation
called the Women's Social and Political Union,
or the WSPU,
and they're not what you might expect.
Meet the suffragettes.
Some of these women you already know.
The middle-class Pankhursts.
Emmeline, the matriarch,
and two of her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia.
But there are others,
and this story also belongs to them.
Women like Flora,
factory manager and logistical mastermind.
Lilian, dancer and undercover activist.
Mary, Canadian artist turned ardent arsonist.
And Annie, millworker and devoted militant.
Well, ladies, what else
have we on the agenda this morning?
- Flora? - Well, we've got two members
in Liverpool...
- In 1913, these women are a force to be reckoned with.
So much so that they actually pose a serious threat
to national security.
But how has it come to this?
I'm going to take you back to the beginning,
to re-examine the chain of events
that have led to them doing
these horrifying things.
And they are going to tell you their story,
in their own words.
- I was extremely annoyed at the difference between
the advantages men had and boys had
to the ones girls had.
It irritated me simply enormously.
Why should God be male?
- I want to tell you why, as a wife and mother,
I am an organiser of this union.
It is because I want my sex to be recognised as a person
in the eyes of the law,
and I want my political rights.
If I cannot change the wicked law
which holds in bondage the womanhood of this country,
I will at least die in the attempt to change it.
- In Edwardian England,
life for women was governed
by a strict set of social rules.
Most working-class women had access only
to poorly-paid jobs in factories
or domestic service.
Middle-class women
could set their sights mostly on marriage.
None had any say in how their country was governed.
Since the 1860s,
campaigners known as suffragists
had been trying to change that fact,
but 40 years of asking nicely simply hadn't worked.
In 1903, from their Manchester kitchen table,
the Pankhursts and some like-minded women
started a new,
more proactive organisation - the WSPU.
The suffragettes would demand change.
But change wouldn't come easily,
because this is what they were up against.
Giving women the vote would mean changing the law,
and the power to do that
rested with the all-male politicians,
here at Westminster.
In May 1905, a debate was planned
about women's suffrage,
so the WSPU led a large group
of suffragettes to Parliament.
But women weren't allowed beyond these doors.
The issue had been debated many times before.
So far, members of Parliament
had thrown out 19 suffrage bills.
Now, a Liberal MP proposed a new bill,
to give women the vote.
Out there in the lobby, Emmeline Pankhurst
and hundreds of suffragettes were waiting to hear
what was going to happen.
But the bill got talked out,
which meant that MPs deliberately spent
so much time talking about another bill
that there was no time left to discuss votes for women.
Hmm.
The suffragettes reacted angrily,
and there was a scuffle in the lobby.
The women got shoved out onto the street.
They'd been quite literally excluded
from the corridors of power.
The suffragettes had seen enough.
There would be no more asking nicely.
- We resolved to be satisfied with nothing
but action on our question.
"Deeds not words" was to be our permanent motto.
- With a general election looming,
after ten years of Conservative rule,
the Liberals were looking likely victors.
The suffragettes decided to pressure Liberal MPs
to commit to votes for women.
It was here, at the Free Trade Hall
in central Manchester in 1905,
that Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney
came to a public meeting.
They wanted to ask about votes for women.
At the meeting would be a man
who was at that point a Liberal MP,
Winston Churchill.
Now, Churchill in principle
was in favour of female suffrage,
but he was a pragmatist.
He cared more about getting votes for his Liberal Party.
If women didn't have the vote,
their needs were pretty low on his agenda.
The meeting was getting towards its end,
and nobody had said anything about female suffrage.
There sat Christabel Pankhurst, 25,
self-styled leader and a precocious student of law,
and her 26-year-old working-class ally,
Lancashire millworker Annie Kenney.
Very few women attended these events,
and they would certainly
have been expected to stay silent.
Annie got to her feet.
She wanted to ask her question
in front of this vast audience of men.
We listened very attentively to the speeches,
and then at the very end the questions were asked.
Some Labour men
putting questions about the unemployed.
Then I rose and put mine.
No reply.
The chairman asked for other questions.
I rose again and was pulled down
by the enthusiastic Liberals behind me.
Annie and Christabel
now did something even more outrageous.
They unfurled a banner
which read, "Votes For Women".
Christabel said that the result was explosive,
the meeting was aflame with excitement.
The women were dragged out.
Hold still, please.
- On what grounds, sir, have we been ejected?
Just hold still, madam.
- I wish to return to the hall.
We didn't hear an answer to our question.
Madam, I cannot permit that.
- Christabel knows exactly what to do
because of her legal training.
And what she'll do next
changes everything.
- The matter must not, I knew, stay where it was.
For simply disturbing the meeting,
I shall not be imprisoned.
I must use the infallible means of getting arrested.
I must assault the police.
The vote depended on it.
- Madam, I cannot permit that.
It is a public meeting...
- Madam. - And I...
- Madam. - ..am a member
of the public.
Madam, hold still, please.
- In this single act, the battle lines are drawn.
These women have been denied access to political debate.
These policemen are the public face
of political power.
They've never had to police respectable women
like this before.
Spitting at a policeman constitutes assault.
The unladylike spit,
his hands on her.
By Edwardian standards,
this is rule-breaking in the extreme.
For the first time,
this raises a question for the authorities -
what are they going to do about these women?
It's a question they'll be asking
for the next nine years.
Suffragettes versus the establishment.
The battle begins.
Both women were charged with obstruction,
and Christabel, with assault.
Crucially, they refuse to pay their fines
and this made Annie Kenney
and Christabel Pankhurst
the first suffragettes to go to prison for militancy.
This was what 'deeds not words' looks like.
But I don't think anyone
had any idea just how far deeds would go.
The next day, the papers were full of it,
and the suffragettes recognised
that the press furore drew more attention to the cause
of female suffrage than it had had in years.
In January 1906,
as predicted, the Liberals won the election.
To ramp up pressure on MPs,
who would now be Cabinet ministers,
the WSPU moved their headquarters to London.
They organised rallies,
heckled MPs, attempted to get into Parliament.
And while it was shocking for women
to so openly break the law,
they made arrest and imprisonment
their key tactic.
Many were brought to Canon Row,
the police station closest to Westminster.
Get yourself arrested, refuse to pay your fine,
have your day in court,
so that the newspapers would report what you said.
This was the way that the suffragettes
drew attention to their cause.
The suffragettes
are deliberately breaking the law to get attention,
but prison is a high price to pay.
The women, like Annie and Sylvia,
will willingly go through those doors,
sacrificing their respectability.
Well, I think it's quite remarkable.
The women you'd expect to find inside
will probably have been convicted
of crimes to do with poverty,
like vagrancy or prostitution.
But these women, they're not the usual criminal type.
And nobody knows quite what to make of them.
- We were marched about barefoot
from place to place.
Here to give up our money, there to be searched.
Raising our arms in the air
whilst the officer rubbed her hands over us
and examined our hair
to ensure we had nothing concealed about us.
All the prisoners seemed quiet now.
There was an atmosphere of...
fear.
You, undress.
Come on.
- When the women come into the prison,
they're stripped of their clothes
and their individuality
and their dignity.
The women have never experienced
anything like this before.
They've broken the rules...
they've crossed a line.
It seems to me that this is a kind of baptism.
I think it's safe to say
that none of them will ever be the same again.
Prison clothes,
prison food,
they'll all be treated like common criminals.
But these women will tolerate these indignities
because they're convinced
they have right on their side.
The cell is six feet by nine feet.
And I just can't imagine only being let out
for one hour a day.
But the thing is, everyone's in the same boat.
In the prison,
the women meet as equals and middle-class women
come face-to-face with poverty.
And this experience
will politicise them all profoundly.
For some, like school teacher Mary Leigh,
prison felt necessary.
We condemned ourselves to prison.
Therefore it was no prison to us.
We had a mission to pursue,
just as Joan of Arc pursued her mission until she became
such a nuisance in the country,
that they had to burn her.
One comes out of prison knowing that
the suffering for others is essential
to the formation of character
and to the furtherance of a great cause.
- Prison will change these women.
Not only because of their experiences inside,
but how they're treated
by their fellow suffragettes when they get out.
- The joy of release,
it was almost worthwhile going to prison
for the supreme happiness of getting out.
Morning, welcome to the Savoy.
Nice to see you.
When the suffragettes came out of prison, they got
almost the exact opposite of the harsh treatment
they'd had inside.
They were greeted at the gates
and then they were whisked off to a welcome banquet
at a lavish location
like this one -
The Savoy Hotel in the Strand.
Welcome breakfasts
and suffragette banquets were pretty grand affairs.
Here's the menu for one of them.
You get eight courses plus coffee.
There were 250 guests, and here's the seating plan.
They were all set out at these big, long tables.
The proceedings kicked off with all the loyal toasts.
Toasts to His Most Gracious Majesty, the King,
and the Queen and the Prince and Princess of Wales
and the rest of all the Royal Family,
before you got to success to the women's suffrage cause.
And all this very conspicuous loyalty
was witnessed by a lot of other guests
who were members of the press.
Some of the suffragettes would never have been
to such a fancy place before.
It must have made them feel awfully special.
These banquets served as a sort of graduation ceremony
for the suffragettes who'd served their time,
and who'd proved their commitment to the cause.
Through these rituals,
I think the WSPU
was creating a distinct identity for itself.
Becoming a movement to which
increasing numbers of women wanted to belong.
For me and for many other young women like me,
militant suffrage
came like a draught of fresh air
into our padded, stifled lives.
It gave us the feeling that we were part of life
and not just outside watching it.
These arrests worked miracles for the cause.
They inspired new recruits
and inflamed those older in the fight.
They inspired deeds of daring.
In fact, jailbirds created jailbirds.
Halls were crowded,
pockets were emptied, prisons filled.
- In February 1907,
at the opening of the new Parliament,
the suffragettes were expecting female suffrage
to feature in the King's speech.
When it failed to appear,
they descended angrily on Westminster
and 50 were arrested.
The largest number at a single event so far.
But the men inside were unimpressed.
Later that month,
another bill came before the House of Commons,
but again, it got talked out.
There were angry protests.
Outside Parliament, this time 74 women were arrested.
In the months that followed,
324 women got themselves arrested.
The mass arrests
were causing uproar in the press, and yet,
the suffragettes' message wasn't getting through.
They'd become objects of ridicule.
Postcards,
the social media of their day,
caricatured them
as failed mothers and wives.
So the WSPU decided to try
to take back control.
- With the close of September
and the commencement of October
starts our great winter campaign for the vote.
The first week will be spent...
- It's October 1907
and this is the first edition of 'Votes For Women'
the suffragettes' own newspaper.
This was a foray into what would become
a really key battlefield,
the public image of the suffragettes.
They're also working on a new publicity campaign.
- Ready to go?
- This is a new suffragette tactic,
chaining themselves to railings.
But this isn't quite what it seems.
It's actually less about protest
and more about propaganda.
This iconic image created by the suffragettes themselves,
will be made into postcards and distributed.
There's something really fascinating
about this imagery,
the women in chains,
the most powerful metaphor there is
for oppression.
The really interesting thing is
that suffragettes only chained themselves to railings
on a handful of occasions.
The images of them doing it,
though, were so widely disseminated,
that they form our idea of the suffragettes to this day.
I think this illustrates
just how canny the suffragettes were
at controlling their image.
There's something very modern
about their mastery of PR.
In February 1908, back here in the House of Commons,
another bill came and went.
Angered by yet another failed bill,
the suffragettes are planning a show of strength
the Government cannot ignore.
So if the columns come together here,
we should be able to avoid congestion,
and keep things moving all the way through the park.
That should work.
That's Flora Drummond.
She left school when she was 14
and she trained to be a postmistress.
But she ended up as the manageress
of a typewriter factory.
She's bringing all of her logistical
and organisational skills to bear
on what's going to be the biggest demonstration yet,
that the suffragettes have organised.
Now, the speakers' platforms are also some distance
from the main entrance.
- The suffragettes are spending
the modern equivalent of 110,000 pounds
publicising their women's Sunday procession,
fully expecting it to be lapped up by the press.
The WSPU have chosen the moment of the Women's Sunday
to launch their colours,
purple, green and white.
That's white for purity,
green for hope and purple for dignity.
This is a genius piece of branding.
The Pankhursts advised the members
to always wear these colours in a fetching,
charming and ladylike manner.
The point is, to show the world
that they're still real women,
that they've still got feminine qualities,
and that this isn't incompatible
with having the vote.
On 21 June 1908,
seven separate processions
got ready to converge on Hyde Park, and Flora,
who was now known as the General,
wore a gold cap and epaulettes
to inspect each one.
On Women's Sunday, which became known as
the day of the Monster March,
30,000 people took part in the procession
and they were watched by half a million more.
Hyde Park here was absolutely packed.
The masterstroke was to ensure
that the march was captured,
not just by newspaper photographers,
but also by newsreel cameramen.
Flora made sure they had prime positions
from which to film the event.
By now, cinema audiences were growing rapidly,
and feature films were preceded
by early forms of newsreel.
The women carried arrows,
like those on prison uniforms
as emblems of honour.
They created a spectacle,
watched not just only by the crowds,
but by many millions more.
And the spectators were impressed
by the womanliness of the people taking part.
This journalist says that
"the dignity, the grace, the beauty, the courage
"of the processionists carried conviction everywhere.
"Scoffers were converted."
"Some who had evidently come to jeer stayed to cheer."
This was a glorious day
for the public image of the suffragettes.
- This organisation is becoming so powerful
and so determined, and women are coming in in every way,
coming forward to us
and giving all their lives to gain this point.
The government can see for themselves
that this agitation
is extending all over the country.
- The Women's Sunday
had swung the public in the suffragettes' favour.
Now they were determined
to use that force of numbers to persuade
politicians to take them seriously.
While the women's Sunday was entirely peaceful,
the police are worried about what the suffragettes
are going to do next.
Christabel, Emmeline and Flora are planning
a sort of mass invasion
at the House of Commons.
They're calling it a rush.
The suffragettes have printed
50,000 leaflets publicising
their illegal assault on Parliament.
- We're going to want to cut off the bridges
and we need to make sure we don't get a big crowd
gathering around the house itself.
- It's supposed to take place on the 13th of October,
but the police have come up with a plan.
They're going to arrest
the suffragette leaders in advance
in the hope that the rush will never happen.
Two days before the event,
the WSPU held a rally in Trafalgar Square,
imploring the crowd to attend the rush.
Rather than arrest them on the spot for incitement,
the police issued the leaders
with a summons to attend court,
which they ignored.
Mrs Pankhurst not here, then?
Back at six?
We'll have to wait then.
Make yourselves comfortable.
- What the police don't know
is that someone else is waiting too -
a photographer, Arthur Barrett -
he's hiding in that cupboard.
Good afternoon, officers.
Ma'am. Information has been laid this day
by the Commissioner of Police
for that you, in the month of October,
in the year 1908,
were guilty of conduct
liable to cause a breach of the peace,
calling upon and inciting the public to do
a certain wrongful and illegal act.
As you wish.
- Knowing they were about to be arrested,
they'd planted Arthur Barrett in the cupboard.
Capturing the moment and spinning it for publicity
was a provocative move that worked.
This photo appeared in the papers the next morning.
The leaders were found guilty of incitement
and sentenced to two months in Holloway.
Meanwhile, the rush took place without them.
60,000 people descended on Parliament Square,
only to be met by a cordon of 5,000 policemen.
The numbers are huge.
They show how votes for women had become
one of the most incendiary issues of the 20th century.
Everyone was talking about the suffragettes
and they were quick to capitalise.
In May 1909, they staged
a women's exhibition in Knightsbridge.
On the face of it, this was a traditional Edwardian bazaar,
selling sweets, dresses, ribbons and cakes.
But it was also rather radical,
with a mock-up of a prison cell showing visitors
what their sisters inside was suffering.
To me, this is a snapshot of a world in flux.
We've got the womanly traditions
still held dear by Edwardian ladies,
combined with the brave new world
of independent, political women.
In March 1909, another bill
came before the House of Commons.
This is the Electoral Reform Bill.
It did pretty well, this one,
it got a second reading,
but the Liberal Prime Minister,
Herbert Asquith, abstained.
And this was despite
his public declarations of support
for female suffrage. What a cad.
In the eyes of the suffragettes,
this made Asquith public enemy number one.
Six years of WSPU militancy,
the arrests, trials, prison sentences,
the rallies and the rush on Parliament,
all of it counted for nothing if Cabinet ministers,
the men at the table of power,
still refused to budge.
So now the suffragettes
decided to set their sights on them.
- Morning, ladies. - Morning.
- Let's see who you all know.
Now, first one.
- That one's easy, Winston Churchill on the right.
Lloyd George on the left, there.
- Nice hats. - Well done, Flora.
- Very good, Flora.
- That's Gladstone, you'd recognise him anywhere.
Home Secretary, likes to look after his own,
that one does.
Not sure he's a fan of female suffrage.
The plan is to develop a new militant tactic.
It's to be a campaign of harassing and heckling
Cabinet ministers.
Not at public meetings, but out on the streets.
Cabinet ministers don't have any particular security.
You can get right up to them
and that's what this lot plan to do.
Grey, Edward Grey.
Foreign Secretary.
They're all foreign to me, the lot of them.
- Now this one, if you don't know this one,
you can go home.
- Asquith. - Asquith.
- At the forefront of assaults on ministers
was schoolteacher Mary Leigh.
She was the leader of the WSPU marching band.
She climbed onto a roof,
removed slates with an axe,
and threw them at Asquith's car down below.
She was sentenced to four months in Winson Green jail.
Over the next few months,
there were dozens more attacks on Cabinet ministers.
Asquith was assaulted again on a golf course,
and later with a catapult.
While Winston Churchill
was attacked by a suffragette with a dog whip.
Heckling Cabinet ministers was one thing,
physically assaulting them was quite another.
Causing actual physical harm to another human being
was definitely crossing a moral line.
And if the suffragettes were willing to use violence
as a means to achieving their ends,
how far were they prepared to go?
Right, so we've got two new officers coming today.
We need to get them up to date as quickly as possible.
- The assaults on ministers
have made the Government take note,
but not in the way the suffragettes might hope.
They've drafted in Special Branch,
headed by Patrick Quinn,
experienced in dealing with the terror threat
posed by Irish nationalists
and European anarchists.
The Home Secretary's just approved
the recruitment of 16 new officers,
just to give protection to Cabinet members.
Cabinet Square.
- It's never, ever happened before
that individual members of the Cabinet
have needed routine, daily protection.
And it's quite extraordinary to think that
they needed it because of the threat
from the nation's mothers,
daughters and wives.
The authorities have already locked up
some of these mothers, daughters, wives.
Among them, Asquith's attacker, Mary Leigh.
But the Government aren't ready
for what these women will do next.
One suffragette has come up with a new weapon
in this war for women's rights.
This seems to be the first time
anyone's used refusing food
as a form of political protest.
In fact, you could say that Marion Wallace Dunlop
invented the political hunger strike.
The suffragette leaders will be quick to see
the power of the action and others will follow.
But it will all come at a terrible cost.
- On my arrival at jail,
I protested against
the treatment to which I was subjected,
and broke the windows in my cell.
At nine o'clock in the evening
I was taken to the punishment cell,
and was then stripped and handcuffed.
On Thursday,
food was brought in.
But I did not touch it.
- I feel so weak.
Breakfast has just been put in.
I said I didn't want any,
God help me.
I wonder if those outside are thinking of us?
I hear knocks on the walls
and all the prisoners are shouting that they
haven't eaten any of their food.
Neither have I.
I am getting disinclined to even write.
When you are on hunger strike and thirst strike,
your suffering is very great.
Your tongue is swollen and your lips are swollen,
the whole body twitches
and you have unendurable sensations.
But you have no fear at all.
For you know perfectly well
you may never leave prison alive.
- After just a few days on hunger strike,
the women are so weak,
the prison authorities are worried they might die.
The Home Office has ordered their release,
ending their sentences early.
Now, the reason that hunger strike
is such a potent and much-copied form of protest
is that it shows that a person's
willing to die for their cause.
And you can see that it put the Government
into a really tricky position.
Obviously they didn't want women dying in prison,
but if they let them out,
it was making a mockery of the criminal justice system.
The early release of the hunger strikers
may have seemed to be
a victory for the suffragettes,
but they didn't bank on what would happen next.
It's 24 September 1909,
and Mary Leigh about to be the first suffragette
to face the Home Office's new directive.
- Where are we going? - Come.
- About noon on Saturday,
I was told the matron wished to speak to me.
And was taken to the doctor's room
where I saw the matron,
the wardresses and a doctor.
There was a sheet on the floor
with an armchair on it.
The doctor said I was to sit down.
And I did.
While I was held down...
a nasal tube was inserted.
The sensation is most painful.
The drums of the ears seemed to be bursting,
and there is a horrible pain
in the throat and the breast.
The tube was pushed down 20 inches.
One doctor inserted the end up my nostril
while I was held down by the wardresses.
During which process
they must have seen my pain.
- It seems to me that being fed by force in this way
is the very definition of torture.
To go through it even once is unthinkable,
yet many of these women will be forcibly fed
three times a day for several weeks.
A few of them will go through it
more than 200 times.
So the nozzle turned
at the top of my nose to enter my gullet.
It seemed that my left eye
was being wrenched out of its socket.
The food was poured
into the funnel, and down into my aching,
bruised, quivering body.
I felt as though I was being killed.
Absolute suffocation is the feeling.
I forgot what I was in there for.
I forgot women,
I forgot everything
except my own sufferings,
and I was completely overcome by them.
- Some sections of the press
were appalled by forcible feeding,
and some supported it.
Postcards were produced that made mockery
of the suffragettes yet again.
They, in turn, produced their own images
depicting the horror of what was happening.
In the escalating war
between suffragette and state,
this was a watershed moment.
Forcible feeding was enormously controversial.
It had been done for a long time
in asylums on so-called fasting girls.
Today they'd probably be diagnosed with anorexia,
but the Government had never
sanctioned it being done before
on people of sound mind.
It really divided the medical profession.
117 doctors all signed
a petition to the Prime Minister
saying, "Don't do this".
One of them felt so strongly
that he's added a personal note saying
that it's an absolutely beastly
and revolting procedure.
And that sooner or later,
there will be fatal results.
On the other hand though, this doctor,
who was a member of the Royal College Of Physicians
that was then based in this building,
it's now the Canadian High Commission,
he wrote privately to the Home Secretary
saying that force-feeding was fine.
He said that hundreds of lives
have been saved by it and that in some cases,
the patient grows positively fat.
So the Government went ahead.
It continued with the forcible feeding.
And this was a pivotal decision,
both for the Government and the suffragettes
there would be no turning back.
Suffragettes persisted with hunger strikes
and on their release from prison,
the WSPU rewarded them with welcome breakfasts
and specially-made medals.
This one belongs to Elsie Duval,
and it was awarded for hunger strike.
I'm very struck by the fact that the medal says "For Valour,"
exactly like The Victoria Cross.
The hunger strike, then,
was becoming an extra rite of passage
for the suffragettes.
And these medals made them
look like war heroes in the eyes
of the other women.
They'd become soldiers for the cause.
If you experienced brutality in prison
and then, when you came out, got rewarded
by the suffragette leadership,
I can see that you might very well become radicalised.
It's a modern word, but I think it's relevant here.
The forcible feeding didn't break the suffragettes -
it made them stronger.
Forcible feeding was fuel to the fire of their militancy,
and the flames of that fire
were getting ever harder to contain.
I go deeper and deeper in my enthusiasm to the women.
And even for their tactics,
as I understand it more and more.
Not only what they do,
but what has been done to them
to drive them to these tactics.
Holloway has been the greatest,
most wonderful experience of my life.
- And if these women were being radicalised
by hunger strikes
and forcible feeding,
what would be next?
Now, this is a letter
from the head of the Metropolitan Police
to the Home Secretary,
and he says there have been reports
of two suffragettes
practising with revolvers at a shooting range
that then stood here on the Tottenham Court Road.
Incongruously, its name was Fairyland.
He said that he fears the real possibility
of the Prime Minister's being fired at
at the entrance to the House of Commons.
And he says that there's something nearly amounting to
a conspiracy to murder.
By the end of 1909,
things were in danger of spinning out of control.
The violence had grown, and demonstrations
and deputations, to assaults and forcible feeding.
Then, to the suffragettes' astonishment,
it looked like the Government was finally
willing to find a peaceful resolution.
Out of the turmoil,
a special Parliamentary committee
was formed of 54 MPs,
to try to solve this question of female suffrage.
They came up with the Conciliation Bill.
It was the best chance of change for 50 years.
After so many failed bills,
there was a genuine desire
on both sides for this one to succeed.
The suffragettes called off militancy,
and the Home Office stopped force-feeding.
Both sides declared a truce.
It's spring, 1910.
The Conciliation Bill
is being considered by Parliament,
and the suffragettes who've been on hunger strike
are slowly recovering.
- It's votes for women.
- In six years,
the WSPU had come a long way
from the Pankhursts' kitchen table.
They now counted celebrities in their ranks,
like the goddaughter of Queen Victoria,
Indian princess Sophia Duleep Singh.
They occupied 23 rooms
of their headquarters, with 110 paid staff,
including men, in all departments
from editorial and advertising
to duplication and dispatch.
They were a sophisticated set-up,
hoping that all this hard work was about to pay off.
On the 12th of July,
the Conciliation Bill passed the first hurdle,
a majority of MPs, more than 100 of them,
voted that it should get a second reading.
But then, political differences
between the Liberals and the Conservatives
meant that it didn't go any further.
The Government had something else
at the top of its agenda -
poverty.
The Liberal Party's big project
was the people's budget,
designed to improve the lives of the nation's poorest
through a fairer distribution of wealth.
In order to get the mandate he needed
for the people's budget,
Asquith decided to call another general election.
This meant that the other big social reform project,
votes for women,
got side-lined.
Yet again.
The suffragettes had held to the truce for almost a year,
but the failure of the Conciliation Bill
reignited their anger.
There was not one of us
who would not have gone to our death at that moment
had Christabel so willed it.
It was a mercy for the militant movement
when the truce was broken.
- On Friday, 18 November 1910,
300 women marched on Westminster.
Anticipating trouble,
extra police officers were drafted in from the East End.
Women tried repeatedly to get into parliament,
but were kettled by the police.
They were contained within Parliament Square.
What happened next
was violence of a whole new order.
In this moment,
the battle lines between suffragette
and state are redefined.
Drafting in police from a rougher part of town
has introduced a dangerous ingredient.
Where before, handling these women at all
broke Edwardian rules of respectability,
this deliberate sexual contact
was totally transgressive,
and deeply shocking.
After six hours of running battle,
there were 119 arrests,
and many injuries.
Was he wearing a uniform?
No, but I'm sure he was police.
He had that look about him.
He didn't look me in the eye once
while he did what he did.
The police rode at us with their horses.
So I caught hold of the reigns, and would not let go.
A policeman caught hold of my arm,
and twisted it round, and round,
until I felt the bone almost breaking.
That's Henry Brailsford.
He's a journalist.
He walked out of his job at the Daily News,
when the paper came out in favour
of the forcible feeding of suffragettes.
He's come here today to take down testimony
from the women who experienced Black Friday.
Can you tell me what happened to you?
Several times constables
and plain clothes men who were in the crowd
passed their arms around me from the back,
and clutched hold of my breasts from...
in as public a manner possible.
And men in the crowd followed their example.
I also had my chest pummelled,
and my breast clutched by
one constable from the front.
As a consequence, three days later,
I had to have medical attention, as...
my breasts were discoloured...
and very painful.
One policeman put his arm around me
and seized my left breast.
Nipping it, and wringing it very painfully.
Saying as he did so,
"You have been wanting this"
"for a long time, haven't you?"
One gripped my thigh,
and when I demanded that he should cease
doing such hateful action to a woman, he said,
"Oh, my old dear,"
"I can grip you wherever I like today."
My skirt was lifted up, as high as possible.
And the constable attempted to lift me off the ground
by raising his knee.
This, he could not do.
So he threw me into the crowd.
And incited the men to...
to treat me as they wished.
- The report, compiled by a female doctor, Jessie Murray,
and Brailsford, makes for quite distressing reading.
He interviewed 135 women,
and 50 of them said that they experienced injuries
that gave them pain days or weeks afterwards.
And 29 of them made claims
that they'd suffered from indecent conduct,
which means a sort of sexual assault.
Brailsford used all this evidence
to call for a public inquiry.
He wanted to know how far the police had been
instructed to behave like this.
The Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, refused.
He said that the police had behaved
with the forbearance and humanity
for which they'd always been distinguished.
And he repudiated the "unsupported allegations
"of that copious fountain of mendacity,"
"the Women's Social And Political Union."
Despite the fact the Government
tried to have the negatives destroyed,
this photograph appeared
in the papers the next day.
This was bad press for the men in power
at Number Ten Downing St,
who were more accustomed
to having the newspapers on their side.
As you walk up the staircase, you pass centuries worth
of British Prime Ministers, and it goes without saying,
that they're all man, man, man, man,
until you get to Mrs Thatcher, right at the top.
When it was Asquith's turn in power,
all the members of Parliament were men too.
So were the lawyers,
the police officers, and the bishops.
Not only were women excluded from the establishment,
but some of these men
colluded with each other to keep it that way.
Now, here is an excellent example of a cosy,
chummy relationship
between one politician and a press baron.
Lord Northcliffe owned a whole string of newspapers,
including The Observer, and The Times.
And he was pretty friendly with Winston Churchill.
He sent Churchill a present,
and this is Churchill's thank you letter.
He says, "My dear Northcliffe",
"thank you very much for the beautiful"
"and sumptuous walking stick."
He says he's going to use it
as a weapon to be applied
to the suffragettes.
Then he goes on to say,
"Really, your papers have been
"very good to me" this year.
What about some golf?
"PS, When do you want me"
"to take you down in a submarine?"
He'd become a British icon, but Churchill,
like many politicians of his age,
closed ranks and made light
of the harsh treatment of the suffragettes.
They, in turn, resolved to scale up
their response with a new offensive.
Hello, ladies.
- Welcome. - So, choose your weapon.
- Rocks, or hammers?
- After Black Friday, women are reluctant
to put themselves in harm's way.
But there are still hundreds of them
ready to sign up for this latest assault.
Normally, the suffragettes announced
their demonstrations in advance,
but this time, they secretly coordinated a mass action
that's going to take everybody by surprise.
I want you to continue, do not stop.
God speed, ladies.
On 1 March 1912,
an army of women made their way to central London
to await their cue.
I took up my station
with others outside Liberty's windows.
We walked up and down,
and tried to look interested in the goods displayed.
Throughout the West End shopping area,
with a unanimity that was near to being magical,
as the first stroke of Big Ben
boomed out the hour of 11,
100 hammers came out of handbags,
pockets and sleeves.
- In an unprecedented,
coordinated attack, hundreds of women vandalised
property throughout the West End.
They'd smashed windows before,
but never on this scale.
It is quite true,
I used a hammer and stones to break windows.
Because I realise that that is the only
effective means of protest left to us.
Votes and riot are the only
two forms of appeal
to which this Government will respond.
They refuse us votes, therefore,
we fall back on riot.
Do not mistake our object.
It was not an attack
upon West End shopkeepers.
But upon the Government,
through the medium of insurance companies.
- The damage was estimated at 6,500 pounds.
Equivalent to about 500,000 pounds today.
9,000 police were called to the area,
that's almost half of the Met's entire force.
And over 200 women were arrested.
Clearly, the suffragettes
putting themselves in harm's way
was a serious business, but now they were attacking
the property of other people.
The response was
to decapitate the WSPU -
Special Branch raided
the WSPU offices
and arrested the leadership.
And they were charged with incitement,
and sentenced to nine months in Holloway.
This time, the suffragettes had found a way
of hitting the establishment where it hurt.
The Government was in no mood to negotiate.
Shortly afterwards,
when another revised
Conciliation Bill came before the Commons,
it was categorically defeated.
The MP Sydney Buxton
said that if the House of Commons pass this bill now,
it would be an endorsement of the methods
and the actions of the suffragettes.
So militancy was increasingly divisive,
and even at the heart of the WSPU
there were concerns
that it was alienating public opinion.
Some members opted to leave, and set up other groups.
To avoid arrest, Christabel had gone into exile in Paris,
but tried to keep control over those who remained
through her right-hand woman, Annie Kenney.
- Then started my life of real responsibility.
The editors of the paper, the most eloquent speakers,
and the creative leader all swept away.
What a responsibility for me.
- Special Branch are now watching
the suffragettes' every move to try to
pre-empt further militant action.
When there's due cause,
the Special Branch have the power to intercept
letters and telegrams.
By now, and it's March 1912,
these powers have been enormously extended.
The Home Secretary has given them permission
to read every single telegram
sent either to or from the WSPU.
In total, 262 of these telegrams will be
forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
This is classic intelligence gathering.
The Government was clamping down on the suffragettes.
Then, in June 1912,
a month into her prison sentence,
Emmeline Pankhurst went on hunger strike.
Reluctant to forcibly feed
one of the figureheads of the movement,
the authorities released her.
Soon afterwards, at an Albert Hall meeting,
Emmeline addressed the doubters.
She reminded the audience of the cause,
and she said explicitly
that she was going to incite ever-greater militancy.
"We have a great mission," she said to the audience.
- The greatest mission the world has ever known.
I incite this meeting to rebellion.
Be militant, each in your own way.
I accept the responsibility for everything you do.
- For the core of committed militants who remained,
this was a clear call to arms.
In the early hours of 13 July 1912,
a suffragette was arrested
outside the house of a Cabinet minister.
Court records show that in her basket
she had firelighters, pick locks,
tapers, matches, and two cans of inflammable oil.
There was also a chilling little note, it read,
"I've taken part in every peaceful method
"of propaganda and petition,
"but I've been driven to realise
"that it's all been of no avail."
"So now I have done something drastic."
This new tactic of arson is a big shift in gear.
The aim is to inflict maximum damage to property,
and the point isn't to get arrested,
the point is to get away with it.
So what kind of women
are prepared to commit these crimes?
Lilian Lenton,
a carpenter's daughter from Leicester,
she heard Emmeline speak
and vowed to sign up when she came of age.
Mary Richardson, raised in Canada,
moved to Britain at 16, imprisoned,
force-fed, and clearly radicalised.
Arson.
The word had haunted me so long,
I had known I should not escape in the end.
I must pay the full price demanded of a suffragette.
I had no home, so there was no one to worry over me,
and over whom I should worry.
I had to do more than my fair share
to make up for the women
who stood back from militancy,
because of the sorrow
their action would have caused
to some loved one.
I was at suffragette headquarters and announced
that I didn't want to break any more windows,
but I did want to burn some buildings.
And I was told that another girl
had just been in
saying the same thing.
So we two met,
and the real serious fires
in this country started.
- The suffragettes may only be
targeting empty properties,
but this is a dangerous, illegal act.
I do understand how they got to this point.
The right to vote depends on
a man's ownership of property.
Looked at in a certain way,
Edwardian society puts more value on property
than it does on women.
You can see why they might want to burn it down.
Come on, hurry.
- But it's hard to imagine
that this violence is going to persuade
the Government to give women the vote.
By spring 1913,
suffragettes were targeting exclusively male sites
like cricket pavilions.
But they also sabotaged postboxes with ink or acid,
they cut telegraph wires and they damaged paintings.
Most famously,
Mary Richardson would use a hatchet
to smash a nude by Velazquez.
It seemed nothing was off-limits.
The suffragettes are serving longer prison sentences,
they're still going on hunger strike
and being forcibly fed.
But many will reoffend just as soon as they're released.
The authorities are desperate to keep track
of what has become
a dangerous band of wanted women.
The prison authorities regularly
take mugshots of convicted criminals.
But the suffragettes know
that if they move about and struggle
when the photograph's being taken
it'll come out blurred,
exposure times are still relatively long.
So the prison governors
have decided that they're going to photograph
the suffragettes secretly,
without their knowledge, or consent.
The suffragettes have gone to great lengths
to control their public image,
how the world sees them.
And now the tables have been turned, once again.
Covert photographs of suffragettes
including Lilian Lenton and Mary Richardson
were distributed to warn
police stations, museums and galleries.
These were Edwardian women
as they'd never been seen before.
I think the forces that created them
were propelling them towards ever-greater extremes.
It was not long to wait
before I heard what my new task was to be.
Once again, my companion and I were called upon
for the almost superhuman effort
of remaining calm and collected,
while all the time,
the hot terror of what lay in front of us
burned in our brains.
- You might well be wondering
where the suffragettes have learned their
bomb-making skills.
Well, one of them has got a husband who's a chemist.
Edwy Clayton is a member of the men's league
for women's suffrage.
I think he's been giving them lessons.
Even if there's no intention to endanger life,
clearly, bomb making is a high risk tactic.
It's terrifying that things have escalated this far.
In February 1913,
a bomb damaged a house that was being built
for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George.
The damage may not have been extensive,
but it was hugely significant.
I can see how years of frustration and ill-treatment
may have driven them to it,
but the suffragettes had crossed a line...
into terrorism.
That night, there was a big suffragette meeting,
and Emmeline Pankhurst took full personal responsibility.
"I have advised," she said,
"I have incited, I have conspired."
That gave Special Branch
grounds to arrest her again for incitement.
This time she was sentenced
to three years penal servitude.
Already in poor health, she immediately
went on hunger strike again.
With Emmeline Pankhurst in prison,
and on hunger strike,
the authorities were getting
increasingly anxious that she,
or maybe some other suffragette,
might die while on their watch.
So they came up with a new act,
the Prisoner's Temporary Discharge For Ill Health Act.
This meant that when the suffragettes got too weak,
they'd be released from prison,
they'd be allowed to build up their strength,
then they'd get rearrested
to finish off their sentences.
Now, unlike all the other bills,
this one got a very swift journey through Parliament.
The act solved one problem, but it created others.
The authorities spent considerable time and resources
tracking released suffragettes
who went to great lengths to evade them.
It became known
as the Cat and Mouse Act.
Using disguises and a network of safe houses,
Lilian Lenton became one of
the best-known suffragettes on the run,
and her exploits were avidly followed in the press.
When I was released from Armley Jail in 1913,
I was taken to the home of a local suffragette in Leeds.
When I got there I noticed large numbers of detectives,
both at the front door, and at the back -
it was a terraced house -
whose job it was not to let me get away.
Nevertheless, within a few hours,
I was out, I got to Edinburgh,
and walked up to a policeman,
and asked him the way to somewhere,
so I could get to this house.
So then he says, "Let me carry your case for you."
He was a very polite man.
It struck me as a joke
to let the policeman carry the bombs,
so I said, "Thanks very much, it is rather heavy."
The suffragettes set their sights on empty houses,
train stations, and some high-profile targets
in the centre of London.
On the 14th of April,
the so-called milk can bomb
was discovered just here,
outside this side entrance to the Bank of England.
The Times newspaper reported
that this bomb was
"an ingenious and elaborate mechanism".
Inside the milk can there was a watch timer,
a battery, there was blasting powder,
and it was all connected together using hairpins.
Then a few weeks later, on the 7th of May,
something happened in St Paul's Cathedral.
In the early hours of the morning,
the under verger, Mr Harrison,
was checking things out,
and doing a bit of dusting
when he heard an ominous ticking sound.
It was coming from just here,
underneath the Bishop's chair.
It was a square box, about six inches across,
and wrapped in brown paper.
Another bomb. He took it to the verger's office,
where they put it in a bucket of water
and then rushed it out of the cathedral.
Underneath the brown paper
the bomb was then wrapped in a page torn
from the suffragette newspaper.
And under that, there was a metal mustard tin
packed with enough dynamite
to have caused a very serious fire,
right here in the heart of the cathedral.
At a time of deference and faith,
bringing a bomb into a building
as sacred as a cathedral
was profoundly shocking.
It shows the suffragettes had lost all regard
for the very institutions like the Church of England,
and the Bank of England,
upon which society was built.
Now, this is the actual mustard tin
that was discovered underneath the Bishop's chair.
It says on it, Keen's Mustard, London.
It's surprisingly heavy.
And here on the top
is a very sophisticated timer that you twist.
And this here, well, this is
the milk can from the Bank of England.
You can just make out the word 'dairy'
on the top of it.
And these two items are highlights
of the City of London Police Museum.
What strikes me is the way
that they are made out of such domestic items,
the mustard, the milk, the hairpins.
It seems particularly appropriate
for bombs that were made by women.
Although, they were no less deadly for that.
Christabel is in exile.
Annie is in-and-out of jail,
and taking turns as acting leader.
And the bombing campaign is intensifying.
- Militancy will be more furious than before.
You, who sympathise with the militants,
surely will come forward tonight
and join the militant ranks
and give, in your name,
to do one deed within the next 48 hours.
There are many things you can do.
You don't need me to tell you.
You all know.
When you have done it,
don't forget that you have got to get away,
so that you can do it again.
- From piers to pavilions, to MP's houses,
in April 1913 alone
there were 33 bomb
or arson attacks.
The object was to create
an absolutely impossible condition
of affairs in the country.
To prove that it was impossible to govern
without the consent of the governed.
It was a rule that we must risk
no one's lives but our own, but,
if you take a bomb somewhere,
however great the precautions,
you can't be 100% sure.
I hated the whole business.
We all did. And would much rather
have had the vote than do
this sort of thing to get it.
- In response to the bombing campaign,
the authorities struck back at the WSPU,
pursuing women under the Cat and Mouse Act,
and seizing documents,
and their newspaper was censored.
In these first months of 1913,
several properties of the WSPU
will get raided by the police.
The headquarters gets a going over,
and so, too, does Annie Kenney's house.
So, with censorship and surveillance,
and police raids,
and women on the run,
that question that was asked way back
at the Manchester Free Trade Hall,
of "What are we going to do about these women?"
is clearly testing the powers
of the state to their very limits.
It was starting to look like an impossible situation
where neither side could afford to capitulate.
But then, on 4 June 1913,
one event occupied all the headlines.
Emily Wilding Davison
died after attempting to attach a banner
to the King's horse at the Epsom Derby.
The suffragette leadership
had not been party to her plan,
but they took charge of her funeral,
a spectacular event watched by millions.
Her death spurred the militants on,
but there were fears on all sides
that it would just be a matter of time
before there'd be further loss of life.
In May, June and July,
there were 60 bomb or arson attempts.
And when all the suffragette militancy is added together
this is what it looks like.
In total, there were
more than 160 attacks.
In October, Annie made a speech
just there in the Pavilion Theatre.
The police came onto the stage and arrested her.
She was sentenced to 18 months in Holloway,
but she immediately went on hunger strike,
and had to be released after four weeks
on the grounds of ill health.
Annie made two more speeches after that,
but by now she was so weak
that she had to do it from a stretcher.
- The only way you can stop militant methods
is by giving women the vote.
And the sooner you realise that, the better.
We shall go on, and on,
and go to prison, and come out of prison,
and be as bad as ever,
in fact, we shall go from bad to worse.
There is something in this movement
that no power of opposition,
whether of the government,
or the people, can stop.
- The suffragettes went on to attack Buckingham Palace,
Westminster Abbey and Holloway Prison.
The total cost of damage caused by bombs and arson
has been estimated at 56 million pounds
in today's money.
By February 1914,
1,241 prison sentences
had been served by the suffragettes,
and 165 women had been forcibly fed.
There was a real sense that militancy,
and the Government response to it,
had become something of a runaway train.
The Home Secretary said
that this was a phenomenon
absolutely unprecedented in our history.
And after a decade of protest, and arson,
and bombs,
the suffragettes seemed as far away
from getting the vote as ever.
But then, everything changed.
Overnight, the war transformed
the political landscape of Britain completely.
The WSPU ceased militancy,
and the Government released all imprisoned suffragettes.
While some sought to keep
the flag of women's suffrage flying,
many suffragettes, like Emmeline and Christabel,
focused solely on the war effort.
But as men left for the front,
the Government's attitude to women's place in society
began to change,
by necessity.
More than a million women joined the workforce,
and the value of their contribution
could no longer be denied.
On 6 February 1918,
Parliament passed
the Representation of the People Act.
Finally, after more than 50 years of campaigning,
and a decade of militancy,
it gave women over 30,
who met a property requirement,
the right to vote
for the very first time.
The ten years of suffragette militancy
forms one of the most important chapters
of British history.
Once you understand the chain of events
that led to the escalating violence,
you can't excuse their more extreme acts -
violence is always wrong -
but they do raise some important questions.
Who should have a voice in society?
How far should they go to get their voice heard?
When does the end justify the means?
And what would you do to defend your rights?
Whatever you may think about the suffragette violence,
they themselves believed
that the right to vote was worth the fight.
- The standard set was high...
and we lived up to it.
The discipline stern, we accepted it.
The work hard, we did it.
The oppression fierce, we overcame it.
The dangers many, we faced them.
And in the end, we won.
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