The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom founded in 1903. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership and policies were tightly controlled by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. Sylvia was eventually expelled.
Cicely Mary Hamilton, was an English actress, writer, journalist, suffragist and feminist, part of the struggle for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. She is now best known for the feminist play How the Vote was Won, which sees a male anti-suffragist change his mind when the women in his life go on strike. She was also the author of one of the most frequently performed suffrage plays, A Pageant of Great Women (1909), which featured the character of Jane Austen as one of its "Learned Women."
The Women's Freedom League was an organisation in the United Kingdom from 1907 to 1961 which campaigned for women's suffrage, pacifism and sexual equality. It was founded by former members of the Women's Social and Political Union after the Pankhursts decided to rule without democratic support from their members.
The Women's Tax Resistance League (WTRL) was from 1909 to 1918 a direct action group associated with the Women's Freedom League that used tax resistance to protest against the disenfranchisement of women during the British women's suffrage movement.
Charlotte Despard was an Anglo-Irish suffragist, socialist, pacifist, Sinn Féin activist, and novelist. She was a founding member of the Women's Freedom League, the Women's Peace Crusade, and the Irish Women's Franchise League, and an activist in a wide range of political organizations over the course of her life, including among others the Women's Social and Political Union, Humanitarian League, Labour Party, Cumann na mBan, and the Communist Party of Great Britain.
A movement to fight for women's right to vote in the United Kingdom finally succeeded through acts of Parliament in 1918 and 1928. It became a national movement in the Victorian era. Women were not explicitly banned from voting in Great Britain until the Reform Act 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1872 the fight for women's suffrage became a national movement with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). As well as in England, women's suffrage movements in Wales, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom gained momentum. The movements shifted sentiments in favour of woman suffrage by 1906. It was at this point that the militant campaign began with the formation of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).
Beatrice Harraden (1864–1936) was a British writer and suffragette.
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience. In 1906, a reporter writing in the Daily Mail coined the term suffragette for the WSPU, derived from suffragist, in order to belittle the women advocating women's suffrage. The militants embraced the new name, even adopting it for use as the title of the newspaper published by the WSPU.
Evelyn Jane Sharp was a pacifist and writer who was a key figure in two major British women's suffrage societies, the militant Women's Social and Political Union and the United Suffragists. She helped found the latter and became editor of Votes for Women during the First World War. She was twice imprisoned and became a tax resister. An established author who had published in The Yellow Book, she was especially well known for her children's fiction.
Suffrage drama is a form of dramatic literature that emerged during the British women's suffrage movement in the early twentieth century. Suffrage performances lasted approximately from 1907-1914. Many suffrage plays called for a predominant or all female cast. Suffrage plays served to reveal issues behind the suffrage movement. These plays also revealed many of the double standards that women faced on a daily basis. Suffrage theatre was a form of realist theatre, which was influenced by the plays of Henrik Ibsen. Suffrage theatre combined familiar everyday situations with relatable characters on the stage in the style of realist theatre.
The Church League for Women's Suffrage (CLWS) was an organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. The league was started in London, but by 1913 it had branches across England, in Wales and Scotland and Ireland.
The Actresses' Franchise League was a women's suffrage organisation, mainly active in England.
The United Suffragists was a women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.
Alice Maud Arncliffe Sennett also known with the stage name of Mary Kingsley was an English actress and suffragist and a suffragette, arrested four times for her activism.
The Suffrage Oak is a Hungarian oak tree in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow, planted in 1918 by a number of female suffrage organisations to commemorate the passing on the Representation of the People Act in 1918. A plaque was added in 1995 by the Women's Committee of Glasgow City Council on International Women's Day. It was named Scotland's Tree of the Year in 2015 after being nominated by the Glasgow Women's Library.
Bessie Lyle Hatton was an English actress, playwright, journalist, and feminist, and took part in the struggle for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
Alice Davies was a British suffragette and nurse. She was imprisoned for protesting for women's right to vote by smashing windows, went on hunger strike and was awarded the Women's Social and Political Union Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour'.
The New Constitutional Society for Women's Suffrage (NCS) was a British organisation that campaigned for women to be given the vote. It was formed in January 1910 following the election to lobby Liberal members of parliament. The organisation was not militant and it did not support the actions of suffragettes. Its objective was "... to unite all suffragists who believe in the anti-Government election policy, who desire to work by constitutional means, and to abstain from public criticism of other suffragists whose conscience leads them to adopt different methods". The NCS dissolved in June 1918 following the passing Representation of the People Act 1918 which gave the right to vote to women aged over 30 for the first time.
Agnes Helen Harben was a British suffragist leader who also supported the militant suffragette hunger strikers, and was a founder of the United Suffragists.
