Of the Women's Social and Political Union, 1903-1914

spite of any criticisms that one can Rise Up Women:THE MILITANT CAMPAIGN make of his book, it must be admitted OF WOMEN'S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THE that it is a careful, detailed study UNION, Andrew Rosen. London: 1903-1914. and that al those who have a serious Routledge and Kegan Paul, Pp. 1 1974. 312. interest in the field will find it val• uable. The women's suffrage movement in Britain Rosen provides us with a thorough analy• has received remarkably little careful, sis of the WSPU from its Independent analytic treatment from historians. Labour Party origins in Manchester in In recent years there have been a number 1903 up to the beginning of the First of good popular books about the suffrage World War. He gives his reader a full movement in Britain, all of them focus• explanation for the organization's ing on the Militants, whose activities rise from obscurity to the period after and leading personalities lend themsel• 1906, when it became the most prominent ves to a popularised account. The most of the suffrage organizations. His ac• recent of these, Midge Mackenzie's count of the rise of militancy and of Shoulder to Shoulder (which was inspired its significance is interesting and by the B.B.C. television series) has a suggestive, as is his interpretation of fascinating collection of photographs the character and the motives of the and would make an excellent gift. But Pankhurst leadership. His analysis of Shoulder to Shoulder, like most popular• the relationship between the WSPU and isations, tends to overemphasize the and the police, press and government is leading personalities and relies uncrit• more extensive than any given before in ically on their self-perceptions. This a secondary account. Rosen provides is also the case with another good pop• new information through his analysis of ularisation, An tonia Raeburn's The such factors as the average age of mem• Mi 1 i tant Suffragettes (1973). bers of the WSPU at various periods, and of the WSPU's finances, and he of• Books 1 ike The Militant Suffragettes and fers for the first time a reliable Shoulder to Shoulder have the great estimate of the amount of damage done merit of making their material easily during the arson campaign of 1913- In accessible to the reader who is unfam• short, this is the best account so far iliar with the subject. Rosen's Ri se of the history of the WSPU and will un• Up, Women.' is an attempt to do something doubtedly remain the "definitive" work quite different. Rosen says he has for some time. produced the first "full length scholar• ly monograph based on extensive research I say this rather grudgingly, because into archival source material" on the in my view the book suffers from a num- Women's Social and Political Union. In ber of serious deficiencies. The most an understanding of the way in which serious overall deficiency is that the both women's position in society and book is too narrow in its scope. I organized feminism were molded by, hesitate to make this criticism because class structure. It is clear to me all too often attacks on women's history that both the WSPU and the Women's Free• as "narrow" are made by fundamentally dom League (the other important "mili• hostile, antifeminist critics. For many tant" group) had a very different per• people, the idea of a historical inter• ception of working-class women from that pretation which perceives women as cen• of the "constitutional" groups represen• tral is threatening--threatening to ted by the National Union of Women's cherished perceptions of the present as Suffrage Societies. It is unfortunate well as of the past. I am not sugges• that Rosen did not examine this issue ting then that the WSPU is too limited more fully. a subject to serve as a central focus for a monograph of this size, but Rosen also fails to deal fully enough rather that Rosen sees his subject in with the relationship of the issue of isolation, and that this limits the use• "the Vote" to other sorts of issues fulness of his study. He would have that concerned the suffragists. They written a better book had he been able span a wide spectrum and include such to give us more of a sense of the diverse concerns as educational reform WSPU's relationship to other political and social purity. A sensitivity to institutions, especially to other suf• these issues and a greater awareness of frage organizations, and had he been the differences they created among suf• able to draw into his analysis a grea• frage activists would have enriched ter sensitivity to the general social Rosen's interpretation. For instance, and economic context. his treatment of the WSPU's 1913 cam• paign against venereal disease--embodied Rosen does not really confront the prob• in Christabel Pankhurst's "The Great lem of class cleavage, for example: he Scourge and How to End It" — is incom• merely makes the usual remarks about the plete because he is not fully aware of middle-class nature of the suffrage the Social Purity issue. In Christa• movement. After my own excursions into bel 's "Great Scourge" articles she in• some of the archival material to which sisted on the prevalence of venereal Rosen had access, I think that the re• disease among men in Britain and asser• lationship of the various suffrage or• ted that only independence (symbolized ganizations to working-class women and by the Vote) could rescue women from to the (predominantly male) organized infection, because only then could labour movement is still largely unex• women insist on a single standard of plored and that an examination f {his purity. Although Rosen does admit Q relationship would be of great value to that Christabel Pankhurst's ideas about continence and prostitution were as distinct from the leadership, his not unusual, he claims that her views attention is directed for the most part about the prevalence of syphilis were to the age and marital status of the peculiar to her. This is not in fact women. Throughout the book, I find his the case: reputable medical doctors had preoccupation with marital sfatus un• been making such statements as far back just ifiable--expecia 11y since he pre• as the 1870s, during the Contagious sents the category "unmarried" as if it Diseases Acts controversy. The claims were self-explanatory. One suspects were undoubtedly exaggerated, but that, like their contemporary opponents, Christabel Pankhurst was not alone in Rosen believes that the suffragettes making them. Nor was the WSPU unusual were a group of frustrated spinsters. in emphasizing "Purity" at this time: In a recent review in the T imes both Suffrage and Antisuffrage groups Literary Supplement the social histor• had taken up the issue. In discussing ian Brian Harrison (whose judgement on the "Great Scourge," Rosen says: "It most matters is better than it is on is not easy to explain why the offic• feminism) has said that he thinks a ials and ordinary members of the WSPU feminist perspective is a liability to neither took exception to Christabel's anyone attempting women's history: but allegations nor questioned seriously I think that Rosen's trivializing and her fitness to continue to set WSPU insensitive approach might have been policy." If he had done some reading avoided had he been more aware of the in the popular press with a view to issues raised by the women's movement. exploring this issue, he would have Rosen is at his weakest when his insen- known that few WSPU members would have sitivity to the social and economic questioned her judgement because in context is combined with his insensi- fact her statements were less exag• tivity to the issues raised by feminism. gerated than many that were being made For example, in the chapter in which he at the time. discusses the background of the early WSPU activists he gives a brief sketch of the lives of Annie Kenney, Hannah Rise Up, Women '. ' s other serious weak• Mitchell and Teresa Bi11ington-Greig. ness is one that feminist historians The most significant characteristic especially will find irritating. Rosen that these three women shared is that, indulges in a considerable amount of unlike the majority of suffrage ill-considered psycho-history in his activists, they did not come from attempts to analyse the personalities middle-class backgrounds. (Annie of the suffragettes. While it is com• Kenney and Hannah Mitchell were defin• mendable that he has made a systematic itely working class: Teresa Billington's attempt to illuminate the character .and family was on the borderline between motives of the membership of the WSPU the working and lower middle class). tion of young British feminist his• Rosen does recognise this fact but, in torians, and this seems to me to be un• his attempts to arrive at an explanation fortunate, although understandable--the for the activism of these three women, first accounts of the rise of feminism he emphasizes certain similarities he in Britain did overemphasize the suf• sees in their family lives: according frage struggle. But it was of great to him, they all had ineffectual importance, and good analyses of the fathers, dominant mothers and unsatis• suffrage movement can contribute to an factory or non-existent husbands. In understanding of those aspects of all three cases, he has grossly dis• women's history which now seem of para• torted the evidence. In Hannah mount significance,such as women's Mitchell's autobiography The Hard Way position in the family and in the work- Up, for example, Mitchell does express p1 ace.

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