Describe Ways In Which The Methods Of The Suffragists And Suffragettes Where Different

During the long and arduous women's rights campaign there were two main campaign parties, the Suffragists and the Suffragettes. These two parties and there overall aims were very well known throughout the British Empire and some of the tactics used were very brutal, but extremely effective.

So to begin, the Suffragists were an extremely large group of women and some men who believed that the women of the British Empire should have the right to vote for who ran the country that they lived in. The suffragist movement (the NUWSS (National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies)) was founded in 1897 by Millicent Fawcett who was born in Suffolk in 1847. Apparently she was hit by inspiration at one of the MPs John Stuart Mill's (representative of women's suffrage in the houses of parliament) speeches in 1865 as he explained to the public about women's rights and why women should be allowed to vote thus leading her to the creation of the NUWSS. Millicent did not believe that violence gave results, so the NUWSS attempted many peaceful methods of communicating with the men of the government to get there rights law past, for example they wrote letters to members of parliament, they visited member's houses and they signed many, many, many petitions. However, there rather feeble attempts were unsuccessful and no news came to them of the law being past.

So in 1903 two women Emmeline Pankhurst (Born 1858 in Manchester) and her daughter Christabel Pankhurst (Born 1880 in Manchester) got fed up with the slow and inadequate protesting of Mrs Fawcett. They believed that violence gave results, they wanted the right to vote and they wanted it now. So they decided to create the "Women's Social and Political Group" (WSPU), soon thousands of other women flocked to this promising, new group and this now massive group of women caused absolute mayhem throughout the country. These were women who were now 100% inpatient and frustrated, after 35 years they still hadn't gotten any closer to getting the right to vote, they wanted results and they were willing to do anything to get them, "anything".

They attacked by-elections, they were heckling MP's (Including future Prime Minister Winston Churchill) they even broke windows and valuable paintings. However, the suffragettes did not always use such "rash" tactics, they occasionally would follow in the NUWSS' footsteps, for example they would occasionally manage a protest without a riot or they might write (inappropriate) letters to MPs, but they are better remembered for there consistent violence and vandalism which they were constantly publicised and encouraged for.

For example, when the suffragettes were sent to prison (for doing what they did best) they decided to starve themselves. The reason for this is so that if they died in the government's prison, due to lack of food or water, then the population are automatically going to believe that the government did nothing to stop the suffragettes from killing