The Daily Express’ Reporting of Suffragette Crime 1913

Sadie Clifford Sheffield University, UK

Abstract

The postmodern emphasis on language and discursive struggle (Foucault) means it is an ideal methodology in which to study newspapers and other media forms over time. Deconstructive techniques focus on the narrative, which is directly relevant to the analysis of 'stories', and Foucault's power relations theory admits the study of historical change, which has often been neglected in media studies. I will be using the case of the Daily Express's reporting of the militant suffragettes campaign in 1913 to win the franchise through methods of disorder and law-breaking. I will elaborate on certain themes apparent in these stories, the characters which emerge and regular plots. This will lead to some tentative conclusions about the Daily Express' news values, gendered attitudes and audience. The case study will be used as an example to critically assess the usefulness or otherwise of the postmodern approach.

Introduction The women’s suffrage movement had begun well before the turn of the century, firstly through small, local organisations such as the Manchester Suffrage Society. These grew in membership and popular support to form the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1897 (Holton, in Purvis 1995: 285), but its impact on legislators was minimal. In 1903 the Women’s Social and Political Union was formed under Emmeline Pankhurst and her two daughters, Sylvia and Christobel, which was almost from the outset a far more militant organisation, prepared to move beyond well-mannered petitions and polite demonstrations to have their case heard. Through the next decade, their campaign escalated from interrupting political speakers (particularly members of the Liberal government), to chaining themselves to railings at Downing Street and Buckingham Palace, and becoming embroiled in scuffles with the policemen who came to arrest them. By 1912 the Prime Minister, Asquith, had accepted the principle of women’s suffrage and added an amendment to the Plural Voting Bill to bring it into law. However, in January 1913 the Speaker of the House ruled this addition would not be allowed, since it changed the nature of the Bill. The suffrage campaigners were incensed at what they saw as a betrayal of a promise, and the intensity of their actions sharply increased. 1913 was a year of frequent and dramatic suffragette crime, and became a regular topic of reports, reader’s letters, opinion pieces and leader columns. For this reason I have chosen to examine that year’s Daily Express newspapers in order to analyse its reaction to politically motivated crime in relation to the social category of gender. The suffrage campaign had been ‘militant’ (for example, smashing windows, chaining themselves to railings and holding large-scale demonstrations [Lowe, 1989: 397]) since 1907 and the Daily Express had clearly formulated an opinion on these events. The first article on the subject of the year, (Mon Jan 20:1:2), headlined ‘The Supremacy of Man’, reports on Grey’s amendment to the Plural Voting Bill which would in effect enfranchise some women by leaving out the specific word ‘male’ (around 6 million according to property and marriage qualifications [Mon, May 5:3:2]). In this, the "women suffragists" are described as having temperaments of "folly and fury". The most common proper nouns used for the perpetrators of these 'outrages' are "suffragettes", "women or female suffragists" and "malignants", the last clearly inferring a low opinion of them. The OED (1989) shows a difference in meaning between the first two terms, with the former connoting a "violent or 'militant' type", and present-day historians use the words accordingly. Although 'suffragette' had been coined in 1906, by the Daily Mail, at the beginning of 1913 the Daily Express used the words interchangeably. This is the case not only in that newspaper but also for an (unknowable) number of society, as is shown by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's phrase "honest constitutional suffragette" (Tues. Apr. 29:5:6). However, the date May 8th 1913 marks a semantic shift caused by the rejection of the Women's Suffrage Bill the day before and the subsequent increase in suffragette violence, including an attempt to bomb St Paul's Cathedral. Here for the first time is seen the differentiation between the law-abiding 'suffragist' and the criminal 'suffragette', corresponding to an increase in violence of tone in the Daily Express. By demarcating with language a boundary between the women, the newspaper is free to unleash a greater anger at those who are less likely to be their readers, or wives of readers. It also serves to marginalise the suffragettes, specifically their actions but by extension, though to a lesser degree, their argument. Subsequently, the most common name for them is "militant suffragettes", which may suggest that the opposing meanings had not yet firmed sufficiently for the Express to feel sure the intended sense would be understood, so it is anchored by the prefixing word. However, articles on the non-militants are few, demonstrating the non- news-worthiness of the rejection of criminal tactics in a socio/political movement. No words of approval can be found for their abiding by the law, which may suggest the Express generally disapproves of female suffrage, however it is campaigned for, or that the writers do not see the suffragists as the flipside to the suffragettes, (implying the opposing meanings have been solidified by historians since the period). Possibly the most likely explanation is concerned with the balance of news within the paper, so that to cover both a WSPU and a NUWSS action would be too much suffrage news. Faced with a choice of reporting "scenes of wild disorder" (Mon March 17:1:7) and a suffragist writing to her husband’s M.P, any journalist - then as now - would cover the former. There are several facets to the character of 'militant suffragette' as portrayed in the Daily Express. One key explanation of their criminal behaviour is insanity. For example, they are described as "crazy" (Thurs May 8:1:2) and "frenzied" (in the same column). This day saw the news of a clockwork bomb at St Paul’s Cathedral, which was attributed by police and cathedral authorities to the militant women although there was no suffrage literature left at the site, as happened at most other WSPU crime scenes. The concentrated presence of these words indicates the heightened tone of the article, yet this semantic field was not a new development in the paper’s language; it had been characterising a female demanding the right to vote as a creature without reason for some time. For example, an article on the tactic of damaging golf greens (Tues 18 Feb: 6: 4) asks "what should be done with the mad suffragists…? Also in this semantic field is a description of a WSPU speech as "wild threats" (Weds Jan 29:1:3) and the members as "fanatical" (Tues March 11:1:4) and "wild" (Fri March 21:1:7). The link between these words is the connotation of absence of reasoned thought, which is associated with their binary opposites, e.g.; ‘sane’, ‘sensible’ and ‘civilised’. Lunacy is a legal disqualification for the vote, opening a possible space for interpreting that the women were being portrayed as mentally incapable of carrying the responsibility of suffrage. That ‘democracy’ is considered a mark of civilisation strengthens this potentiality, linking the enslaved natives of the Empire to their British mistresses by their shared primitive state, too close to the apes to understand politics. This is demonstrated graphically through a comparative picture on Tues, Feb 25:1:4/5. Side by side are pictures of Mrs Drummond, "the leader of the suffragette criminals..." and ‘Eoanthropos Dawsoni’, "the ancestress...the face of what scientists describe as ‘a missing link’ between humanity and the apes". The comparison is entitled "Evolution - or - Devolution?" and the similarities are reinforced by the captions "The New Woman (200,000 years ago)" and "The New Woman (Today)". The intended meanings are finally anchored in the last caption; "What sane Englishwomen think of the Suffragettes. The above comparison is sent to the ‘Express’ by one of its women readers". These two sentences perform several functions - to insult the suffragettes but to give the source perhaps to avoid accusations of slanderous ‘yellow’ journalism, to draw distinction between them and female ‘Express’ readers, thus claiming for the paper a respectability based on the virtuousness (or at least sanity) of their female readership, and to place the suffragettes in the opposite category - that of insane. This article therefore supports my hypothesis of a semantic link between sanity and civilisation in this context, and places suffragettes on the negative side of each binary opposition - they are both mad and uncivilised. Yet these are just two of the characteristics of the suffragette according to the Express. They share a common expression of relevant unsophistication of thought, a physical incapability of matching the brainpower of white men. However, this construction is challenged from within the Express discourse. An alternative definition of the suffragette is advanced at the same time, even in the same columns. It directly contradicts the connotations of the first two characterisations by crossing the great divide between the classic binary opposition explanation of criminal behaviour - mad/bad. This was enshrined in law in 1843 under the M’Naughten Rules, which state that a person cannot be tried as a criminal if they have "such defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong" (Maguire, Morgan and Reiner, 1997). In such a case, the person is ruled insane and enters the State system of psychiatric care. Therefore the two definitions of states of being are mutually exclusive. But in the Daily Express newspaper, the suffragettes are apparently capable of both. They are described as "criminals" (e.g., Tues. May 6:1:7,) and "inciters of crimes" (Sat. Apr. 19:4:6). They are "hooligan[s]" (Thurs. May 8:1:3) who prosecute a "campaign against society" (Wed. Apr. 16:1:2, Mon. May 12:1:2). These are "plotters" (Wed. Apr 9:1:2) who lay bombs at churches, on railway lines and stations, at which "human life was endangered" (Sat. Apr. 5:1:5). These are no backward creatures; they are able to construct "infernal machine[s]" (Mon. Apr. 21:1:7), collect "a secret...arsenal" (Fri. Mar 14:1:7) and "plot" (Tues. May 13:1:4, Tues. Apr. 8:1:2) a "war..." (Weds. May 14:5:7). They are even described on two occasions as "anarchists" (Tues. May 13:1:4, Sat. May 17:1:5), which connotes a political programme, albeit to spread chaos, fired by a political motivation. The construction of suffragette as criminal is most clearly seen in an article entitled "The Last Straw. Suffragette Crime goes beyond all bounds" (Thurs. May 8:1:2-4) in which the Daily Express calls for the deportation of the suffragettes to St Helena. The island was most famous as the gaol to which Napoleon was exiled, and prisoners from the Boer war were also kept there. In demanding that the government "Enforce the Law of Deport Them" the paper attributes a further meaning to their character of the suffragette which directly contradicts the two other senses. It places them in a category alongside "housebreakers, White slave dealers and murderers" as persons responsible for their actions and in full knowledge of their criminality, thus richly deserving of justice. Although this construction is oppositional to the previous one, it does not have an opposing consequence. Criminals lose their right to vote during their imprisonment, whilst the insane are similarly disqualified. A suffragette poster from the time declares "Convicts and lunatics have no vote for Parliament. Should all Women be classed with these?" Sadly, according to the Daily Express, the answer appears to be yes.

Sources Daily Express 1st Jan - 30th June 1913 Lowe, N. 1984. Mastering Modern British History. Macmillan Press: Basingstoke and London. Maguire, M., Morgan, R. and Reiner, R. 1997 Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford University Press. Oxford. Purvis, J. (Ed. 1995) Women's History. Britain, 1850 - 1945. UCL Press London.

Sadie Clifford was awarded her first degree, BSc Social Sciences from the University of Bradford in 1997, where she majored in History and Politics. The same year she was awarded a bursary to begin a one-year taught Masters in Historical Studies at Staffordshire University. Here she developed her interest in feminism, post-colonialism and postmodernism with figures such as Dr Claire Midgley, Dr Barbara Bush, and Dr Alun Munslow. In 1999 she was awarded a scholarship from the Saints and Sinners Club to undertake a PhD at the University of Sheffield in the discursive development of crime reporting on the Daily Express from 1900.

All articles are copyright of their respective authors ShOP Feb 2000 ISSN: 1470-0689