Emmeline Pankhurst
The real hero of the women’s suffrage movement in Britain.
Emmeline Pankhurst advocated for women’s suffrage and the general advancement of women in society. She is the rightful founder of the women’s franchise league and was an activist in her own right. Emmeline was academically gifted but was not provided the opportunity of education like her brothers were. Her activism started with the lack of right she had on her own mind, body, and on her political opinions. Her speech ‘our civil war’, is till date the most powerful speech given by a woman in the 1913’s. She spoke highly about the discrimination against women of the era; women of her era.
Freedom or death? The motive of her speech was not just powerful but was a groundbreaking move. “Either women are to be killed or have the right to vote. Human life is sacred. But we say if any life is to be sacrificed it should be ours: we won’t do it ourselves but we will put the enemy in a position where they will have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death” she didn’t care for going to jail for the 5th time, or going through more hunger strikes, to fight for the freedom they all so rightly deserved. She didn’t care whether they approved of her tactic or not she told them that they must see that woman's suffrage is of utmost importance right now. She spoke out about her concerns of women’s lack of right to vote. She asks the men of Hartford to imagine that they were not in the position of being voters at all, that they were governed without their consent being obtained, that the legislature turned an absolutely deaf ear to their demands, what would the men of Hartford do then? They couldn’t vote the legislature out. They would have to choose; they would have to make a choice of two evils: they would either have to submit indefinitely to an unjust state of affairs, or they would have to rise up and adopt some of the antiquated means by which men in the past got their grievances remedied. The woman’s civil war the dear men of my country are discovering it is absolutely impossible to deal with it: you cannot locate it, and you cannot stop it.
“Put them in prison,” they said, “that will stop it.” But it didn’t stop it at all: instead of the women giving it up, more women did it, and more and more and more women did it until there were 300 women at a time, who had not broken a single law, only “made a nuisance of themselves” as the politicians say. But she didn’t stop. She kept fighting. Pankhurst often referenced the war “waged by women,” addressing those who listened that “people have suffered, but you cannot make omelets without breaking eggs.” She explained how necessary it was for women to become voting rights advocates and to adopt revolutionary methods to win the right to vote, a right which was inherently theirs — specifically because like men, they were human beings. Despite this obvious fact, Pankhurst constantly reminded attendees that women earned a poverty wage, had no right to their husband’s land and had no legal say in their children’s upbringing. These inequalities, she emphasized, could change with the vote. A lot could change with the vote. She continually stresses the need for radical action and perseverance, Pankhurst said women could be slow to rouse, “but once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible.” For those who thought women could not succeed, she said the suffragists in England made their government “face this alternative: either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote.”
She bore the fruit of her fight in 1918 with Britain granting the vote to women over the age of 30, and final victory in 1928 with equality of franchise. Emmeline lived to see it but sadly died a few months later.
Even so, many years later the end of her speech rings in my head like a bell that won’t sit still. “I come in the intervals of prison appearances: I come after having been four times imprisoned under the ‘cat-and-mouse act’. Probably going back to be rearrested as soon as I step foot on British soil. I come to ask you to help win this fight. If we win it, this hardest of all fights, then to be sure in the future it going to be easier for all women, all over the world to win their fight when the time comes”. Emmeline always said she wasn’t fighting the woman's suffrage movement for herself, but she was for all the women who are victims of the divorce law, the unequal pay, and those less fortunate than her. Women who couldn’t be here because it was infidelity. But she was right. After women got the right to vote, the fight for all women became easier. It was still hard, but the most challenging part was over. We were in the government system, it was a step forward, we were allowed to voice our opinions and there was no choice for them, but to hear them.
Pankhurst not only fought till we were given the right to vote she also energized the women’s movement of the early 1900s in Connecticut and throughout the country. She shaped the idea of women for our time. She marked a new phase in the battle for women’s vote.
And I salute her.
