Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst is considered one of the principal proponents of democracy, the person who did the most to secure women political rights. She is also seen as being responsible for radicalizing the cause of women's suffrage by taking the Women's Social and Political Union in the direction of what we today would call terrorism. They started with simple acts of protest like spitting at policemen and breaking windows. They moved on to slashing paintings, to arson, to cutting telegraph wires and ended up bombing places and this campaign of violence is only stopped in the First World War. Pankhurst called off all protest, and women joined in the war effort. And it is actually that work, which secured women the vote, much more than anything to do with the violence or the force-feeding or the bombings or arson that Pankhurst had encouraged previously.