Suffragettes used a wide variety of methods to force politicians to embrace their cause of votes for women, including arson attacks on post boxes and bombing the chancellor's house.

Here, two historians say whether they should be judged today as terrorists.

YES

Suffragettes are seen as selfless today but in the early 1900s they were regarded as terrorists, historian Simon Webb writes.

Even the mildest criticism of the suffragettes makes many people feel uneasy.

The image which we have of them today is that of selfless and patient women, enduring imprisonment, hunger strikes and the horror of force-feeding in pursuit of what was surely a just cause - that of equality of rights between men and women.


Their weapons were, we have been led to suppose, those of passive resistance and peaceful protest, rather than violence against others.

The worst they might have done is break windows or chain themselves to railings.

This popular perception is quite false; the suffragette movement was actually a terrorist organisation.

In the years leading up to the First World War, the suffragettes conducted a ferocious and prolonged bombing campaign across the whole of the United Kingdom; planting improvised explosive devices (or IEDs) in places as varied as Westminster Abbey, St Paul's Cathedral, the Bank of England, the National Gallery, railway stations and many other locations.

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Image: David Lloyd George's Surrey home was bombed by suffragettes in 1913

The first terrorist bomb to explode in Ireland in the 20th century was planted not by the IRA, but by the suffragettes.

They also invented the letter bomb; designed to maim or kill those with whom they disagreed.

One of the first bomb attacks carried out by the suffragettes was on the house of chancellor of the exchequer Lloyd George.

It went off at a little after 6am on 19 February 1913.

The bomb, which brought down ceilings and cracked walls, was planted by none other than Emily Davison, who later died beneath the hooves of the king's horse at the 1913 Derby.

There is currently talk of erecting a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst near Parliament, which is a little strange when we consider how unpopular terrorists are these days.

Pankhurst was the leader of the suffragette terrorists.

After the explosion at Lloyd George's house, she was brought to trial at the Old Bailey for complicity in the attack and sentenced to three years imprisonment.

Those planning the bombings were not lone wolves or mavericks; they were being directed and supported by the suffragette leadership.

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Image: The suffragettes, including Emmeline Pankhurst (front l), are usually thought of as peaceful protesters

The day after Mrs Pankhurst was sent to prison, a bomb was placed outside the Bank of England.

Fortunately, a policeman managed to defuse it before it detonated in the crowded street.

For the next 16 months, the bomb attacks came thick and fast.

Some devices, such as one planted at St Paul's Cathedral on 7 May 1913, failed to explode.

Others, such as the large device left at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh a fortnight later, did go off, causing a great deal of damage.

The wave of bombings led to a hardening in the government's position, as well as alienating those who supported the idea of a change in the law to allow women the vote.

There had been every chance before the bombings began that a private members' bill to introduce the vote for women might succeed in getting through Parliament.

But few politicians wished to be seen giving in to terrorism and, as a result, this bill failed even to gain a second reading.

After the failure of the bill, it was plain that the suffragette bombers were harming the struggle for women's civil rights far more than they were aiding it.

Image: Emily Davison was killed by King George V's horse in 1913 during the Epsom Derby

Throughout 1913 and the first half of 1914, the bomb attacks increased, striking places as diverse as Holloway Prison and the changing rooms at Cambridge University's football ground.

Churches became prime targets, because of a perceived opposition of the Church of England to women's rights.

Among the churches where bombs exploded were St Martin-in-the-Fields, in Trafalgar Square, Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, famous from The Da Vinci Code, and, on 11 June 1914, Westminster Abbey; damaging the Coronation Chair.

The last bomb of the campaign exploded at Christ Church Cathedral in the Irish town of Lisburn, on 1 August 1914.

That same day, Germany declared war on Russia and then, two days later, on France.

The First World War had begun. With the outbreak of the war, the suffragettes abandoned their activities and threw themselves into the war effort.

The struggle to win the vote was forgotten in an upsurge of patriotic feeling.

The terrorist bombings carried out by the suffragettes have today been almost wholly forgotten; replaced with a sanitised view of the activists as people who would do nothing more dangerous than break the occasional shop window.

Far from hastening the granting of votes for women, the suffragettes impeded the political progress towards this aim by their dangerous actions, causing most people to reject them as violent fanatics.

Had it not been for the bombings, there is every chance that the vote would have been given to women before, rather than after, the First World War.

:: Simon Webb is the author of The Suffragette Bombers: Britain's Forgotten Terrorists.

NO

Those few people who claim the suffragettes were terrorists are misguided and sensationalist, writes women's history professor June Purvis.

They are simply seeking to condemn these radical women who were campaigning for their democratic right to the parliamentary vote.

Although there is no one accepted definition of terrorism, a key aspect is the intention to harm or take life, particularly of innocent civilians.

If Emmeline Pankhurst, the inspirational leader of the suffragettes, were alive today, she would be horrified by the actions of the present-day suicide bombers who ruthlessly kill and injure at random, women, men and children going about their daily lives.

The suffragettes did not kill or harm anyone.

Throughout the suffrage campaign, Emmeline Pankhurst emphasised that human life should not be endangered.

As late as 1975, the former suffragette Mary Leigh, then in her nineties, recollected: "Mrs Pankhurst gave us strict orders… there was not a cat or a canary to be killed: no life."

The suffragettes were members of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Emmeline Pankhurst, her eldest daughter Christabel and some socialist women in Manchester in 1903.

This new organisation, which was for women only, was to campaign for the parliamentary vote for women on the same terms as men.

Image: Men and women campaigning at a suffragette meeting in London's Hyde Park

It aimed to attract women of all social classes and political affiliations, and to unite them under the slogan, 'Deeds, not words'.

In its early years, the WSPU engaged in peaceful protest that did not catch the attention of an all-male parliament, nor the press.

Christabel Pankhurst, the WSPU's brilliant key strategist, decided that more confrontational tactics were necessary.

On 13 October 1905, she and fellow suffragette Annie Kenney were arrested after they shouted out a question about votes for women at a Liberal Party meeting at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester.

In court the next day, the two women, as planned, chose imprisonment rather than pay a fine for their "unruly" conduct.

Although the newspapers of the day condemned their "unladylike" behaviour, the stunt worked in that many more women flocked to join the WSPU.

From then on, heckling of MPs and a willingness to go to prison became common suffragette tactics.

With their cry of "Rise Up Women!" the charismatic Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, both powerful orators, roused thousands of women to demand, rather than ask nicely, for their democratic right.

However, successive deputations to Parliament and imaginative stunts to support their cause - such as chaining themselves to the railings of No 10 - had no effect.

Herbert Asquith, the Liberal prime minister for most of the campaign, was a fervent opponent of votes for women.

By 1912, the suffragettes were banned from attending Liberal Party meetings and banned from holding their own.

Denied legitimate means of protest, a minority of the women engaged in damage to private and public property - mass window smashing, firing empty buildings or destroying mail in postboxes.

But such violent, unlawful acts of vandalism were not terrorism.

Nor did the Liberal government denigrate the WSPU as a terrorist organisation or prosecute militant suffragettes as terrorists.

We must also remember why some of the suffragettes turned to these more violent tactics and discuss state violence against the women.

Even when campaigning peacefully before 1912, the suffragettes could be roughly handled by the police, or forcibly fed if they went on hunger strike.

Forcible feeding was a brutal, life-threatening and degrading procedure, performed by male doctors on struggling female bodies.

Many of the women spoke of it as a form of instrumental rape.

Some would be fed 242 times.

The violence inflicted on the suffragettes by the police on 10 November 1910, when another peaceful deputation tried to reach parliament, had been a turning point.

The women were treated with exceptional brutality, many of the assaults being sexual in nature.

Legs were kicked, arms twisted, breasts pinched, knees thrust between legs.

This state-inflicted violence on Black Friday, as the day became known, was frequently cited as the reason the more extreme forms of vandalism suffragettes engaged in from 1912.

What was the point of women's bodies being battered and assaulted in their just demand for the vote if damage to property brought about a quicker arrest?

Far from being terrorists, the suffragettes played a critical part in the passing of the 1918 Representation of the People Act which granted the parliamentary vote to all women graduates and certain categories of women aged 30 and over.

Their contribution to the making of our modern democracy must not be written out of history.

:: June Purvis is Emeritus Professor of Women's & Gender History at the University of Portsmouth. She has written many articles and books on the women's suffrage movement, including Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography, and Christabel Pankhurst: A Biography.