The Militant Suffrage Campaign in Perspective.

PHILLIPS, Mary.

$750.00

Item Number: 135293

London: Latimer Trend & Co, [1957].

Rare first edition of Mary Phillips’ personal account of the militant suffragette movement. Octavo, original wrappers. Foreword by the Right Hon. Lord Pethick-Lawrence. Mary Elizabeth Phillips joined the radical Women’s Social & Political Union in 1907 and established a Glasgow branch of the WSPU. In March 1908 she was sentenced to six weeks in Holloway Prison following a demonstration outside the House of Commons. She remains the longest prison serving suffragette. In near fine condition.

In 1872, the fight for women’s suffrage became a national movement in England with the formation of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). In addition to England, women’s suffrage movements in Wales, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom gained momentum. By 1906, the movements had begun to shift popular sentiments and a militant campaign began with the formation of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Known as the suffragettes, its membership and policies were tightly controlled by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia (although Sylvia was eventually expelled). The WSPU membership became known for civil disobedience and direct action. It heckled politicians, held demonstrations and marches, broke the law to force arrests, broke windows in prominent buildings, set fire to post boxes, committed night-time arson of unoccupied houses and churches, and—when imprisoned—went on hunger strike and endured force-feeding.