There’s something strange about centenaries, anniversaries, ‘#onthisday’s. It feels arbitrary and yet, there is something about the temporal closeness that makes them feel a little more significant than usual. Today, 100 years ago, the first wave of women were able to vote alongside men. Not all women, of course – it would be 10 years until that milestone was reached. But nevertheless, 100 years ago today, Hilda Burkitt would have woken up, gone about her morning business and then, at some point, did what she had given 7 years of her mind, body and soul to gain the right to do.
I can’t imagine how it must have felt as she walked into the polling booth, filled out her ballot and left, having exercised her newly gained democratic right. Only four and a half years previously, she had spent three and a half months in prison, a tube down her throat three or four times a day as she maintained a continuous, unfaltering hunger strike. She had broken into empty buildings and left them in flames, she had broken windows, in- and outside of prison, all while shouting, screaming or leaving in written form “Votes for Women!”
She had also spent days, months, years really, patrolling the streets of Midlands towns and cities, spreading the word for the cause she held so dear. Newspapers in one hand, she climbed up onto chairs or boxes and took a breath before regaling the sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly, sometimes both, crowds of the need for the female vote.
An admittedly infrequent, but still common, response to the commemoration of any suffragette or the WSPU usually invites a number of prickly responses:
But what about the suffraGISTs?
We should remember the suffragists, and many historians have been doing very valuable work into the many alternate forms of suffrage activism and how they overlapped with each other. History does not need to be a competition for attention. Commemorate more women! Commemorate them all!
The suffragettes actually harmed the suffrage movement’s efforts!
I tend to shy away from assessment of (in-)efficacy – is it even really relevant now? The suffragettes did what they did, forming their own microcosm of deeds and words, and that is something that is very interesting.
They were what we would call terrorists now!
Indeed. They were what one might call terrorists then. Indeed, in a 1913 editorial by Christabel Pankhurst in The Suffragette, she even uses the verb.
“Very obvious are the replies to these two points. In the first place, the Suffragettes not only “think”, they know that Parliament can be terrorised into granting reform. They also know that Parliament never grants reform unless it is terrorised. The men terrorised Parliament into giving them the Vote. The Catholics terrorised Parliament into giving them emancipation. The Nationalists (by their votes in the House of Commons) are terrorising Parliament into proceeding with the Home Rule Bill.
Terrorism is, in fact, the only argument that Parliament understands!
– 27 June 1913
It is of course, very reductive to employ that ‘terrorism’ as we understand it now is the same as ‘terrorism’ as utilised in 1913. However, there is a case to be made for the fact that the WSPU was an early form of ‘reform terrorism’ in terms of rhetoric and action.(*) . The fact that the only life lost came from their number does not absolve them of some at times very dubious deeds. However, History is full of flawed, dubious ethics. That’s what makes it so interesting. Terrorists or no, the WSPU are a fascinating entity, and much of the history of this particular union and its membership remains to be explored.
I am of course, biased in my interest in Hilda Burkitt, and will always seek to justify it. Even if sometimes our relation to each other seems far too distant to be anything but nominal, I still feel a connection to her – especially when I catch a glimpse of my mother next to her photograph and see traces of similar facial features, when I see my grandfather in photographs of Hilda’s brother. Similar interests have made their way down the family tree; both the past and present lots have talented saxophonists, accomplished long-distance runners, love for textile arts amongst them. When I saw the photograph of Hilda sitting in the garden for the first time I was taken aback; she poses with a cat on her lap and a Jack Russell at her feet, the same two types of pet that have been part of my family since my early teens.
But regardless, Hilda is fascinating as a historical actor, and I will think about her and her cause a lot today. Her actions went beyond the pale, but then so did those of the government who force-fed her, the crowds who mauled her, the Press who defamed her. Her story is complex, her doings even more so – all the more reason to try and piece it back together, as should be the case for the many other figures across the suffrage movement, whether militant, semi-militant or not militant at all.
The vote was not the final victory – 1918 wasn’t even a full victory. As time has passed, old issues have persisted, new ones have arisen. The fight goes on. But today, and in the future, we can at least take the stories of the suffragettes and draw something from them. Hilda’s shows us that courage, persistence and commitment exist in many forms, usually not entirely morally faultless. If anything, she reminds us, as does the WSPU anthem The March of the Women, that ‘naught can ye win but by faith and daring!’
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(*) See The Transfiguring Sword – Cheryl Jorgensen-Earp
Laugh a Defiance 