Untitled Note
Mindli User
The United Procession of Women, or Mud March as it became known, was a peaceful demonstration in London on 9 February 1907 organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (opens in new tab) (NUWSS), in which more than three thousand women marched from Hyde Park Corner (opens in new tab) to the Strand (opens in new tab) in support of women's suffrage (opens in new tab). Women from all classes participated in the largest public demonstration supporting women's suffrage seen up to that date. It acquired the name "Mud March" from the day's weather; incessant heavy rain left the marchers drenched and mud-spattered.
The proponents of women's suffrage were divided between those, known as suffragists, who favoured constitutional methods and those who supported direct action (opens in new tab), who became known as suffragettes (opens in new tab); the NUWSS were constitutional suffragists. The split between the two factions was formalised in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst (opens in new tab), who formed the Women's Social and Political Union (opens in new tab) (WSPU). This organisation held demonstrations, heckled politicians and, from 1905, saw several of its members imprisoned for their increasingly militant actions, which gained press attention and increased support from women. To maintain that momentum and to create support for a new suffrage bill in the House of Commons (opens in new tab), the NUWSS and other groups organised the Mud March to coincide with the opening of Parliament (opens in new tab). The event attracted much public interest and broadly sympathetic press coverage, but when the bill was presented the following month, it was "talked out (opens in new tab)" without a vote.
While the march failed to influence the immediate parliamentary process, it had a considerable impact on public awareness and on the movement's future tactics. Large peaceful public demonstrations, never previously attempted, became standard features of the suffrage campaign; on 21 June 1908 up to half a million people attended Women's Sunday (opens in new tab), a WSPU rally in Hyde Park (opens in new tab). The marches showed that the fight for women's suffrage had the support of women in every stratum of society, who despite their social differences were able to unite and work together for a common cause.
Background
Further information: Timeline of women's suffrage (opens in new tab) and Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom (opens in new tab)
Millicent Garrett Fawcett (opens in new tab) of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (opens in new tab) (NUWSS)
.jpg)
Emmeline Pankhurst (opens in new tab) of the Women's Social and Political Union (opens in new tab) (WSPU)
In October 1897 Millicent Fawcett (opens in new tab) was the driving force behind the formation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (opens in new tab) (NUWSS), an umbrella organisation for all the factions and regional societies, liaising with sympathetic MPs (opens in new tab). Initially, seventeen groups affiliated with the body. The organisation became the leading body following a constitutional path to women's suffrage.[1] (opens in new tab)[2] (opens in new tab)[3] (opens in new tab) In October 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst (opens in new tab) and her daughter Christabel (opens in new tab) formed a women-only group in Manchester (opens in new tab), the Women's Social and Political Union (opens in new tab) (WSPU). Although the NUWSS sought its objectives through constitutional means, such as petitions to Parliament,[4] (opens in new tab) members of the WSPU organised open-air meetings, heckled politicians and chose jail over fines when they were prosecuted.[5] (opens in new tab) From 1906 the WSPU began to use the nickname "suffragettes", which differentiated it from the constitutionalist "suffragists".[6] (opens in new tab)[a] (opens in new tab)
At the time of the Mud March, before the suffragette campaign had developed to damaging property, relations between the WSPU and NUWSS remained cordial.[8] (opens in new tab) When eleven suffragettes were jailed in October 1906 after a protest in the House of Commons (opens in new tab) lobby, Fawcett and the NUWSS stood by them. On 27 October 1906, in a letter to The Times (opens in new tab), she wrote:
The real responsibility for these sensational methods lies with the politicians, misnamed statesmen, who will not attend to a demand for justice until it is accompanied by some form of violence. Every kind of insult and abuse is hurled at the women who have adopted these methods, especially by the "reptile" press. But I hope the more old-fashioned suffragists will stand by them; and I take this opportunity of staying that in my opinion, far from having injured the movement, they have done more during the last twelve months to bring it within the region of practical politics than we have been able to accomplish in the same number of years.[9] (opens in new tab)
The militant actions of the WSPU raised the profile of the women's suffrage campaign in Britain and the NUWSS wanted to show that they were as committed as the suffragettes to the cause.[10] (opens in new tab)[11] (opens in new tab) In January 1906 the Liberal Party (opens in new tab), led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (opens in new tab), had won an overwhelming general election victory (opens in new tab); although before the election many Liberal MPs had promised that the new administration (opens in new tab) would introduce a women's suffrage bill, once in power, Campbell-Bannerman said that it was "not realistic" to introduce new legislation.[12] (opens in new tab) A month after the election, the WSPU held a successful London march (opens in new tab) attended by 300 to 400 women.[13] (opens in new tab) To show there was support for a suffrage bill, the Central Society for Women's Suffrage suggested, in November 1906, holding a mass procession in London to coincide with the opening of Parliament in February.[14] (opens in new tab)[10] (opens in new tab) The NUWSS called on its members to join the march.[15] (opens in new tab)
March
Organisation
.jpg)
Pippa Strachey (opens in new tab) in 1921
The task of organising the event, scheduled for Saturday, 9 February 1907, was delegated to Pippa Strachey (opens in new tab) of the Central Society for Women's Suffrage.[16] (opens in new tab)[b] (opens in new tab) Her mother, Lady [Jane] Strachey (opens in new tab), a friend of Fawcett, was a long-standing suffragist, but Pippa had shown little interest in the issue before a meeting with the educationalist and feminist Emily Davies (opens in new tab), who quickly converted her to the cause. She took on the organisation of the London march with no previous similar experience, but carried out the task so effectively that she was given responsibility for the planning of all future large processions of the NUWSS.[16] (opens in new tab) On 29 January the executive committee of the London Society determined the order of the procession and arranged for advertisements to be placed in the Tribune (opens in new tab) and The Morning Post (opens in new tab).[14] (opens in new tab)
Regional suffrage societies and other organisations were invited to bring delegations to the march. The art historian Lisa Tickner (opens in new tab) writes that "all sensibilities and political disagreements had to be soothed" to make sure the various groups would take part. The Women's Cooperative Guild would attend only if certain conditions were met, and the British Women's Temperance Association (opens in new tab) and Women's Liberal Federation (opens in new tab) (WLF) would not attend if the WSPU was formally invited. The WLF—a "crucial lever on the Liberal government", according to Tickner—objected to the WSPU's criticism of the government.[11] (opens in new tab)[14] (opens in new tab) At the time of the march, ten of the twenty women who sat on the NUWSS executive committee were connected with the Liberal Party.[19] (opens in new tab) Strachey arranged for some of the men from the Bloomsbury Group (opens in new tab) to help with the march; several assisted, including her brother—the psychoanalyst James Strachey (opens in new tab)—and the economist John Maynard Keynes (opens in new tab).[20] (opens in new tab)
The march was scheduled to begin at Hyde Park Corner (opens in new tab) and progress via Piccadilly (opens in new tab) to Exeter Hall (opens in new tab), a large meeting venue in the Strand (opens in new tab).[21] (opens in new tab) A second open-air meeting was scheduled for Trafalgar Square (opens in new tab).[22] (opens in new tab) Members of the Artists' Suffrage League (opens in new tab) produced posters and postcards for the march.[23] (opens in new tab) In all, around forty organisations from all over the country chose to participate.[11] (opens in new tab)
9 February
Wikimedia (opens in new tab) | © OpenStreetMap (opens in new tab)
700m
763yds
Exeter Hall (opens in new tab)
Trafalgar Square (opens in new tab)
Hyde Park Corner (opens in new tab)
On the morning of 9 February, large numbers of women converged on the march's starting point, the statue of Achilles (opens in new tab) near Hyde Park Corner.[24] (opens in new tab) Between three and four thousand women were assembled, from all ages and strata of society, in appalling weather with incessant rain; "mud, mud, mud" was the dominant feature of the day, wrote Fawcett.[25] (opens in new tab) The marchers included Lady Frances Balfour (opens in new tab), sister-in-law of Arthur Balfour (opens in new tab), the former Conservative (opens in new tab) prime minister; Rosalind Howard (opens in new tab), the Countess of Carlisle, of the Women's Liberal Federation; the poet and trade unionist Eva Gore-Booth (opens in new tab); and Emily Davies.[26] (opens in new tab) In addition to the aristocratic representation, attendees included a large number of professional women—doctors, schoolmistresses, artists—and large contingents of working women from northern and other provincial cities, marching under banners that proclaimed their varied trades: bank-and-bobbin winders, cigar makers, clay-pipe finishers, power-loom weavers and shirt makers.[27] (opens in new tab)[28] (opens in new tab)
Although the WSPU was not officially represented, many of its members attended, including Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (opens in new tab), Annie Kenney (opens in new tab), Anne Cobden-Sanderson (opens in new tab), Nellie Martel (opens in new tab), Edith How-Martyn (opens in new tab), Flora Drummond (opens in new tab), Charlotte Despard (opens in new tab) and Gertrude Ansell (opens in new tab).[29] (opens in new tab)[30] (opens in new tab)[31] (opens in new tab) It was common for women to be members of both organisations and to attend the events of both and wear the two badges they provided for members.[29] (opens in new tab)
At the head of the march (left to right), Lady Frances Balfour (opens in new tab) in the light coat, Millicent Garrett Fawcett (opens in new tab) and Lady Strachey (opens in new tab)
By around 2:30 pm in pouring rain, the march had formed a column that stretched far down Rotten Row (opens in new tab). It was led by Lady Frances Balfour, Millicent Fawcett and Lady Strachey, immediately followed by a brass band.[15] (opens in new tab) They were followed by carriages and motor cars, many of which carried flags bearing the letters "WS", red-and-white banners and bouquets of red and white flowers.[32] (opens in new tab)[33] (opens in new tab) Around 7,000 red-and-white rosettes had been provided for the marchers by the manufacturing company of Maud Arncliffe-Sennett (opens in new tab), an actor and leader among the London Society for Women's Suffrage (opens in new tab) and the Actresses Franchise League (opens in new tab).[34] (opens in new tab) Despite the weather, thousands thronged the pavements; according to the historian Harold Smith they were there to enjoy the novel spectacle of "respectable women marching in the streets".[11] (opens in new tab)
Contemporary reports differ in their reporting of how the spectators behaved. The Observer (opens in new tab)'s reporter recorded that "there was hardly any of the derisive laughter which had greeted former female demonstrations",[28] (opens in new tab) although The Morning Post (opens in new tab) reported "scoffs and jeers of enfranchised males who had posted themselves along the line of the route, and appeared to regard the occasion as suitable for the display of crude and vulgar jests".[35] (opens in new tab) Katharine Frye (opens in new tab), who joined the march at Piccadilly Circus (opens in new tab), recorded "not much joking at our expense and no roughness".[36] (opens in new tab)[37] (opens in new tab) The Daily Mail (opens in new tab)—which supported women's suffrage—carried an eyewitness account, "How It Felt", by Constance Smedley (opens in new tab) of the Lyceum Club. Smedley described a divided reaction from the crowd "that shared by the poorer class of men, namely, bitter resentment at the possibility of women getting any civic privilege they had not got; the other that of amusement at the fact of women wanting any serious thing ... badly enough to face the ordeal of a public demonstration".[38] (opens in new tab)
The rally at the base of Nelson's Column (opens in new tab), Trafalgar Square (opens in new tab)
Approaching Trafalgar Square the march divided: representatives from the northern industrial towns broke off for an open-air meeting at Nelson's Column (opens in new tab), which had been arranged by the Northern Franchise Demonstration Committee.[22] (opens in new tab)[39] (opens in new tab) The main march continued to Exeter Hall for a meeting chaired by the Liberal politician Walter McLaren (opens in new tab), whose wife, Eva McLaren (opens in new tab), was one of the scheduled speakers.[36] (opens in new tab) Keir Hardie (opens in new tab), leader of the Labour Party (opens in new tab), told the meeting, to hissing from several Liberal women on the platform, that if women won the vote, it would be thanks to the "suffragettes' fighting brigade".[29] (opens in new tab)[40] (opens in new tab) He spoke strongly in favour of the meeting's resolution, which was carried, that women be given the vote on the same basis as men,[41] (opens in new tab) and demanded a bill in the current parliamentary session.[42] (opens in new tab) At the Trafalgar Square meeting Eva Gore-Booth referred to the "alienation of the Labour Party through the action of a certain section in the suffrage movement", according to The Observer, and asked the party "not to punish the millions of women workers" because of the actions of a small minority. When Hardie arrived from Exeter Hall, he expressed the hope that "no working man bring discredit on the class to which he belonged by denying to women those political rights which their fathers had won for them".[22] (opens in new tab)
Aftermath
Press reaction
Front page of The Daily Mirror (opens in new tab), 11 February 1907
The press coverage gave the movement "more publicity in one week than it had enjoyed in the previous fifty years", according to one commentator.[21] (opens in new tab) Tickner writes that the reporting was "inflected by the sympathy or otherwise of particular newspapers for the suffrage cause".[39] (opens in new tab) The Daily Mirror (opens in new tab), which was neutral on the issue of women's suffrage, offered a large photospread[43] (opens in new tab) and praised the crowd's diversity of classes.[44] (opens in new tab) The Tribune also commented on the mix of social classes represented in the marchers.[27] (opens in new tab) The Times (opens in new tab), an opponent of women's suffrage,[43] (opens in new tab) thought the event "remarkable as much for its representative character as for its size" and described the scenes and speeches in detail over 20 column inches (opens in new tab).[45] (opens in new tab)
The protesters had had to "run the gauntlet (opens in new tab) of much inconsiderate comment", according to the Daily Chronicle (opens in new tab), a publication supportive of women's suffrage.[46] (opens in new tab) The pictorial journal The Sphere (opens in new tab) provided a montage of photographs under the headline "The Attack on Man's Supremacy".[31] (opens in new tab) The Graphic (opens in new tab), a pro-suffrage paper, published a series of illustrations sympathetic to the event. It also carried one that showed a man holding aloft a pair of scissors "suggesting that demonstrating women should have their tongues cut out", according to Katherine Kelly in a study of how the suffrage movement was portrayed in the British press (opens in new tab).[43] (opens in new tab) Some newspapers, including The Times and the Daily Mail, carried pieces written by some of the marchers.[43] (opens in new tab)
In its leading article, The Observer (opens in new tab) warned that "the vital civic duty and natural function of women ... is the healthy propagation of race" and that the aim of the movement was "nothing less than complete sex emancipation".[47] (opens in new tab) It was concerned that women were not ready for the vote and opined that the movement should educate women rather than "seeking to confound men". The newspaper nevertheless welcomed that there had been "no attempts to bash policemen's helmets, to tear down the railings of the Park, to utter piercing war cries ..."[47] (opens in new tab) Likewise, The Daily News (opens in new tab) compared the event favourably to the actions of suffragettes: "Such a demonstration is far more likely to prove the reality of the demand for a vote than the practice of breaking up meetings held by Liberal Associations."[48] (opens in new tab) The Manchester Guardian (opens in new tab) agreed: "For those ... who, like ourselves, wish to see this movement—a great movement, as will one day be recognised—carried through in such a way as to win respect even where it cannot command agreement Saturday's demonstration was of good omen."[49] (opens in new tab)
Dickinson Bill
Willoughby Dickinson (opens in new tab), the sponsor of the failed 1907 suffrage bill
Four days after the march, the NUWSS executive met with the Parliamentary Committee for Women's Suffrage (founded 1893) to discuss a private member's bill (opens in new tab).[15] (opens in new tab)[50] (opens in new tab) On the same day, the suffragettes held their first "Women's Parliament" at Caxton Hall (opens in new tab), after which four hundred women marched toward the Commons to protest against the omission of a women's suffrage bill from the King's Speech (opens in new tab) the day before; over sixty were arrested and fifty-three chose prison over a fine.[51] (opens in new tab)[52] (opens in new tab)
On 26 February 1907 the Liberal MP for St Pancras North (opens in new tab), Willoughby Dickinson (opens in new tab), published the text of a bill proposing that women should have the vote subject to the same property qualification that applied to men. That would, it was estimated, enfranchise between one and two million women.[53] (opens in new tab)[c] (opens in new tab) Although the bill received strong backing from the suffragist movement, it was viewed more equivocally in the House of Commons, some of whose members regarded it as giving more votes to the propertied classes but doing nothing for working women.[55] (opens in new tab) On 8 March Dickinson introduced his Women's Enfranchisement Bill to the House of Commons for its second reading (opens in new tab), with a plea that members should not be swayed by their distaste for militant actions;[56] (opens in new tab) the House's "Ladies' Gallery" was kept closed during the debate for fear of protests by the WSPU.[57] (opens in new tab) The debate was inconclusive and the bill was "talked out (opens in new tab)" without a vote.[58] (opens in new tab)[59] (opens in new tab) The NUWSS had worked hard for the bill and found the response insulting.[58] (opens in new tab)
Legacy
Further information: Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 (opens in new tab)
The band and lead banner
The Mud March was the largest public demonstration in support of woman's suffrage until that point.[15] (opens in new tab) Although it brought little by way of immediate progress on the parliamentary front, its significance in the general suffrage campaign was considerable. By embracing activism, the constitutionalists' tactics become closer to those of the WSPU, at least in relation to the latter's non-violent activities.[40] (opens in new tab) In her 1988 study of the suffrage campaign, Tickner observes that "modest and uncertain as it was by subsequent standards, [the march] established the precedent of large-scale processions, carefully ordered and publicised, accompanied by banners, bands and the colours of the participant societies".[60] (opens in new tab) The feminist politician Ray Strachey (opens in new tab) wrote:
In that year the vast majority of women still felt that there was something very dreadful in walking in procession through the streets; to do it was to be something of a martyr, and many of the demonstrators felt that they were risking their employments and endangering their reputations, besides facing a dreadful ordeal of ridicule and public shame. They walked, and nothing happened. The small boys in the streets and the gentlemen at the club windows laughed, but that was all. Crowds watched and wondered; and it was not so dreadful after all ... the idea of a public demonstration of faith in the Cause took root.[61] (opens in new tab)
The historian Sophia A. van Wingerden considers the Mud March a success, as it "display[ed] the unity of the suffrage movement and secur[ed] wide publicity for the movement and the cause.[62] (opens in new tab)
The march marked a change in perception of the NUWSS from what The Manchester Guardian described as "regional debating society" into the sphere of "practical politics".[63] (opens in new tab) According to Jane Chapman (opens in new tab), in her study Gender, Citizenship and Newspapers, the Mud March "established a precedent for advance press publicity".[64] (opens in new tab) According to the historian Chien-hui Li, the Mud March was a "political spectacle and media sensation"; it influenced other campaigning organisations, including the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society (opens in new tab), who took elements of the Mud March—including the use of colourful banners and bands—for their 1909 march at the International Anti-Vivisection and Animal Protection Congress in London.[65] (opens in new tab)
The failure of Dickinson's bill brought about a change in the NUWSS's strategy; it began to intervene directly in by-elections (opens in new tab) on behalf of the candidate of any party who would publicly support women's suffrage. In 1907 the NUWSS supported the Conservatives in Hexham (opens in new tab) and Labour in Jarrow (opens in new tab); where no suitable candidate was available they used the by-election to propagandise. This tactic met with enough success for the NUWSS to decide that it would become active in all future by-elections,[66] (opens in new tab) and between 1907 and 1909 they had been involved in 31, campaigning in support of any candidate who supported women's suffrage, regardless of their political affiliation.[24] (opens in new tab)
From 1907 to the start of the First World War (opens in new tab) in 1914, the NUWSS and suffragettes held several peaceful demonstrations. On 13 June 1908 over ten thousand women took part in a London march organised by the NUWSS,[24] (opens in new tab) and on 21 June the suffragettes organised Women's Sunday (opens in new tab) in Hyde Park, which was attended by up to half a million.[67] (opens in new tab) During the NUWSS's Great Pilgrimage (opens in new tab) of April 1913, women marched from all over the country to London for a mass rally in Hyde Park, which fifty thousand attended.[68] (opens in new tab) Women were partly enfranchised by the Representation of the People Act 1918 (opens in new tab), which granted the vote to women over 30 who owned property with a rateable value above £5, or whose husbands did;[d] (opens in new tab) women then constituted 39.6 per cent of the electorate. The restriction that only those eligible to vote in the local elections by virtue of their property status meant that approximately 22 per cent of women aged 30 and above were not enfranchised.[70] (opens in new tab) The Act also extended the franchise for men aged 21 or over.[71] (opens in new tab) Full enfranchisement of all women over 21 came ten years later, when the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act (opens in new tab) of 1928 was passed by a Conservative government (opens in new tab) under Stanley Baldwin (opens in new tab).[72] (opens in new tab)
The Mud March is featured in window number four of the stained-glass Dearsley Windows in St Stephen's Hall (opens in new tab) in the Palace of Westminster (opens in new tab). The window includes panels depicting, among other things, the formation of the NUWSS, WSPU and Women's Freedom League (opens in new tab), the NUWSS's Great Pilgrimage, the force-feeding of suffragettes, the Cat and Mouse Act (opens in new tab) 1913 and the death of Emily Davison (opens in new tab) the same year. The window was installed in 2002 as a memorial to the long and ultimately successful campaign for women's suffrage.[73] (opens in new tab)[74] (opens in new tab)