Sunday 12 February 2012

1 March 1912: Were extreme suffragettes regarded as terrorists?

Link to BBC web site, and iPlayer

"A century ago, British women still did not have the vote, and violent protests by the suffragettes were escalating. Were these women seen at the time as something akin to terrorists, or as activists legitimately fighting for a political cause?

"... On the afternoon of 1 March 1912, around 150 women were standing in front of shop windows and government offices in London's West End, and simultaneously took hammers and stones from their pockets and smashed the windows, explains historian Elizabeth Crawford:
"There was great confusion, they didn't try to run away. They were arrested immediately."
One of the suffragettes, Victoria Lidiard, recalled the attack in the 1970s:
"We started at the Marble Arch and... were stationed right down from Marble Arch to Tottenham Court Road - and then bang went all the windows."

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