Emmeline Pankhurst born in 1858, is best known for her violent acts in the name of social progress. She is infamous for these. Yet it is important to place her in the context of her time and to emphasize the contextual framework within which she entered the social and political scene. Paramount to this is the understanding that Pankhurst fought for civil rights years before there were such things really. She acted before Gandhi lit a torch for nonviolence and before Martin Luther King took on his fights in the USA. She acted during the era of WWI, a time when the voices of women were ignored. Her attempts to start a conversation about the injustice of equality were dismissed. Thus, to emphasize this militant aspect of the contributions Pankhurst made to women’s suffrage seems unfair and misses the point of what she was really fighting for and what she was fighting against.
Pankhurst was well educated and raised by a family with impressive connections. Because of this, she was exposed to ideas and conversations which she then applied to her current social conditions in England, Canada and the United States in the early twentieth century. Pankhurst travelled extensively to these countries and used her influence by Mill to form the lectures she gave about women’s rights in each of these countries. Yes, suffrage was the key social item at the time, but it could have been other rights which aligned with her influence by philosopher, J.S. Mill.
John Stuart Mill was a Utilitarian who argued that society should allow all people, including women, to be allowed to pursue their talents, desires, hopes and dreams. On his view, this would yield a better society. When he was elected to the House of Commons, he proposed a seemingly small change to the wording of law; that the word “male person” be replaced with ‘man’. This was called the Reform Act of 1866 and this small change created a series of conversations which ignited not only suffrage, but the idea of equality for women everywhere. “Man” included both men AND women, did it not? This question was the catalyst for the Women’s Movement in England. While the right for women to vote was defeated in this same act, the small change in language that Mill introduced became the starting point for Pankhurst and other suffragettes around the globe.
Pankhurst, on Mill’s cue, began her historic fight for women’s rights. One of her most impressive accomplishments was the founding of the Women’s Franchise League. Sadly, this major win for her and women in England tends to be passed over quickly in articles about her, But this organization was able to make the first strides toward implementing her utilitarian-progressive philosophy by winning for married women the right to vote in England for local elections (not the House of Commons). Many years later, 1913, as she lectured to women in the United States, she had this to say: “Now, I want to say to you who think women cannot succeed, we have brought the government of England to this position, that it has to face this alternative; either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote” (source). Pankhurst and the suffragist movement were able to force the government of England to such a decision only because of these initial steps in 1866.
A second critical element to Pankhurst’s success was her response to England’s boycott of any suffragist articles or press in the media. This boycott shows the infuriating inequality and injustices Pankhurst was fighting for. The government had acknowledged that women did have rights back in 1866, yet, seemingly the British government had a kind of “buyer’s remorse” about this. Here is what Pankhurst had in front of her: 1. She had tried non-violent actions that failed to motivate the government’s actions regarding rights for women. 2. She had won partial suffrage in 1866 yet the government failed to move further. 3. She was forced to take more devastating attention-getting actions. 4. Because of these actions the government suppressed all media about equality and suffrage. Her response to this mean spirited attack was the publishing of “The Suffragette” which was printed weekly and distributed on the streets by women’s rights activists. No matter how hard the British government tried, this publication could not be suppressed. This meant that the media boycott, whose goal was to keep many readers ignorant about the Women’s movement, was thwarted.
Emmeline Pankhurst should not be remembered as the hunger striking prisoner with a bomb setting fetish. She needs to be remembered as a woman who tried a reasonable approach to making social change based on a progressive-utilitarian philosophy and who reacted to an unsympathetic and unwilling government to enter into rational dialogue.