The popular view of Emmeline Pankhurst is that she was a feminist heroine who won a great victory for democracy by gaining the vote for women with her suffragette movement. Yet she has also been criticised as a ruthless, autocratic (non-democratic) leader, who sacrificed family, friends and principles in her pursuit of women’s franchise, harming that cause in the process. This article examines her leadership to assess which view is closer to the truth.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, Emmeline Pankhurst was already an experienced political campaigner. On 10 October 1903, driven by the frustration that a local ILP branch did not admit women members, Emmeline Pankhurst and a small group of socialist suffragists founded the Women’s Social and Political Union. She recalled in her autobiography that the name was chosen ‘partly to emphasise its democracy, and partly to define its object as political rather than propagandist’.
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