Organisational Strategies and Suffragette Militancy

This book explores the issue of how the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) used and re-defined militancy between 1903 and 1914. The aim is to explore how the WSPU was established and consolidated through militancy.

Feminist historiography of the WSPU describes how this organisation functioned daily to unite women from different class and social backgrounds under the cause of equal political rights. This book explores the perspectives of both the rank-and-file members and the leadership. In so doing it offers an alternative analysis to that of male-centred, masculinist interpretations which have seen the suffragettes as deviant, irrational and even ‘mad’, often writing off their experiences and recollections as fantasy. It is asserted that the WSPU significantly contributed to winning the parliamentary vote for women and influenced the British women’s suffrage movement through practical activities shaped by its hybrid structure, militant leadership, fundraising and commercial enterprises, meetings, petitions and the outcomes produced by militancy.

Divided into eight chapters and a conclusion, the first two chapters respectively discuss the origins of the WSPU, the international and racial dimensions, and gendered and contextual meanings of militancy. The following five chapters thematically discuss organisational strategies in the context of feminist interpretations of gender and voice as ‘interruption’ to understand militant suffragette actions.