As the author of a book on suffragette terrorism, I must disagree with Professor June Purvis (Letters, 7 June), who writes that there was no such thing. She quotes Mary Leigh as saying that not so much as a cat was to be harmed by their actions. This is the same Mary Leigh who, acting with others, poured petrol over the carpets of a crowded theatre, set fire to it and then detonated a bomb. She and the others were later charged with “causing an explosion of a nature likely to endanger life”. This is precisely the same sort of charge that terrorists today might face. The women were not charged with terrorism as such, because no such offence existed at that time. The bomb explosions in places such as Westminster Abbey could hardly be called anything other than terrorism. It is interesting to note that the first terrorist bomb explosion in 20th century Ireland, at Lisburn’s Christ Church Cathedral in August 1914, was the work not of the IRA, but the suffragettes.

Simon Webb

Author, The Suffragette Bombers: Britain’s Forgotten Terrorists

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