A few weeks ago I went to see Suffragette at a press screening and I have to admit I was impressed.

Director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan have produced a harrowing portrayal of the extreme measures white women took to take the patriarchy down a peg or two and give the white ladies of the land the right to vote.

Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter and especially Anne-Marie Duff do the original white suffragettes justice with their performances as the key white women, from all class backgrounds in the early 20th century, who risked life, limb and family for the white female voice to be heard.




So you may be thinking, ‘jeez, this lady is really overusing the word white’, and you’d be right, because if I’m to go by the historical accuracy of the film, then we’re meant to believe that there were no women, nay people of colour, living in Britain during the early 20th century.

And don’t get me wrong, I know enough about the times to know that white women were at the centre of the British suffrage movement, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t ethnic minorities in the margins.

British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst being jeered by a crowd in New York, circa 1911 (Picture: Topical Press Agency/Getty Image)

Many Indian women campaigned at the turn of the century for the vote, but they were noticeably absent from the film.

An interesting historical omission, considering that Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh, was a prominent suffragette and member of the Women’s Social and Political Union and marched alongside Emmeline Pankhurst on November 18, 1910, in a 400-strong demonstration since known as Black Friday.

Sarah Gavron explained why she didn’t include Indian suffragettes, saying in an op-ed: ‘The census records of the early 1900s do not record ethnic diversity, but judging by names, the photographic evidence and written accounts, it appears there were just two women of colour who joined the UK movement.

‘We found one photograph featuring women of colour.’

group of Indian suffragettes in London, 1911 pic.twitter.com/y6b54vreRD — Old Pics Archive (@oldpicsarchive) October 1, 2015

Of course there would be less evidence of ethnic minorities campaigning and such at that time, because the country was still dismissive and less willing to include non-white people within society.

If a picture wasn’t taken of women of colour campaigning for equality, does that mean it didn’t happen?

Putting the philosophical question of George Berkeley aside, maybe we can understand Sarah and Abi’s decision to leave key Asian suffragettes out because they wanted to focus on the working class efforts with these fictional militant heroes, but that doesn’t explain the white-washing of peripheral characters.

#Suffragette – great where are the women of colour? What a chance missed. — End of. (@Aibagawa) October 11, 2015

What about those background artists working at Maud Watts and Violet Miller’s launderette in Bethnal Green, living in the houses near Maud’s family home or out and about in the East End? Why were all those extras white despite the fact that East London during the early 20th century was a prime location for migrant and ethnic communities?



A 100 years earlier the British slave trade had been abolished, with slavery following suit in 1833, and though the black immigrant population had declined due to continued scientific racism and discrimination from white society towards the end of the 19th century, there was still between 20,000 and 25,000 living in the capital in the early 1900s.

And I’m not just talking about African immigrants and former slaves. Limehouse was the location of London’s original Chinatown and 95% of the population in the Wentworth Street district of Spitalfields was Jewish thanks to an influx of migrants from Eastern Europe.

In Suffragette you’d be pushed to hear an accent that wasn’t Cockney or the Queen’s English – except of course Brendan Gleeson’s Irish police inspector.

Carey Mulligan as Maud Watts working in the laundry (Picture: Pathe)

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But Anne-Marie Duff – who plays laundry worker and suffragette Violet – claims there were people of colour, telling Metro.co.uk: ‘if you watch the film again you will see women of colour in the laundry scene. There were, my friend, women of colour in that laundry scene.’

I went on to iMDB to look at the full cast list to see if there were any men or women of colour credited as working in the laundry scenes but all those listed are of white performers.

Of course not all of the laundry workers were listed, and maybe my eyes narrowly missed the ethnic extras in the film, as did many of my colleagues, but my friend Sarah didn’t miss a pretty big inaccuracy in the end credits.


Where the movie comes to a close, a timeline scrolls through the years in which women across the world got the right to vote, and for the US it said all women got the right in 1920.

But that’s not true is it? White women got the right to vote in 1920, but most black women and men in the US wouldn’t be free to put their votes into a ballot box for another 35 years thanks to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Issue with Suffragette @SarahRapp saw at end credits: Not ALL US women got the right to vote in 1920. Just white women. #intersectionality — Hanna Flint (@HannaFlint) September 14, 2015

Some of these white suffragettes even disassociated themselves from African-Americans and argued that by giving women voting powers they could support the white patriarchy in keeping black people in chains.

What is intersectionality? American professor Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term Intersectionality in 1989, though as a concept, it already existed. It’s defined as: The view that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity. Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated, but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity. So someone who is black and is a woman will have a different experience than that of all women

Filmmakers who I want to give credit to for making a film to inspire the next generation of female activists, but have approached history through a narrow white feminist perspective.

Filmmakers who have, intentionally or not, perpetuated the idea that we should take notice of white women’s issues in history and ignore intersectionality.

Sarah Gavron is right when she says ‘there is no one agreed historical interpretation, no single “suffrage history.”‘

The early history of women’s rights in the UK has so many different faces…

It’s just a shame Suffragette chose to paint it white.

Suffragette is out in UK cinemas now. Watch the trailer below:

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