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Activism and PoliticsEmmeline Pankhurst died 96 years ago today
Despite her children and other household responsibilities, Pankhurst remained involved in politics, campaigning for her husband during his unsuccessful runs for Parliament and hosting political gatherings at their home.
In 1889, Pankhurst became an early supporter of the Women's Franchise League, which wanted to enfranchise all women, married and unmarried alike (at the time, some groups only sought the vote for single women and widows). Her husband encouraged Pankhurst in these endeavors until his death in 1898.
In 1905, Pankhurst’s daughter Christabel and fellow WSPU member Annie Kenney went to a meeting to demand if the Liberal party would support women’s suffrage. After a confrontation with the police, both women were arrested. The attention and interest that followed this arrest encouraged Pankhurst to have the WSPU follow a more combative path than other suffrage groups.
https://www.biography.com/activists/emmeline-pankhurst
A few days ago her great-granddaughter Helen Pankhurst...
On Tuesday, the campaigner was at Westfield Shopping Centre in east London to launch #SheVotes24, an initiative to encourage women to vote in the general election on 4 July. The scheme, spearheaded by Professor Pankhurst’s organisation Centenary Action, brings together more than 100 organisations campaigning for women’s issues and voices to be at the core of the election. The Fawcett Society, Mumsnet, the Muslim Women’s Network and the National Federation of Women’s Institutes are among those involved.
a quote from her...
“Representation matters. If you don’t have diversity at the heart of politics, it is biased to the perspectives of those in power. In this country, there is a bias toward white men of a certain age. I am really frustrated we only have 31 per cent of candidates who are women.”
Her speech, Freedom or Death, is fire.