Inside History: Protest. Revolt & Reform

ISSUE 7
VOLUME 1
HISTORY
bravery
UK £6.95
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INSIDE
Militant
REBEL
Protest
orator
heroine
Bombs
daughter
imprisoned
suffragette
equality
courage
sister
Arson
WSPU
fearless
Agitator
vilified
determined
Inspiration
relentless
Deeds, not words
CHRISTABEL
PANKHURST
PROTEST, REVOLT & REFORM

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
This issue of Inside History could have been a lot larger. Perhaps the
theme of Protest, Revolt & Reform was too ambitious to be
condensed into a single magazine. For this reason, this issue begins
with the events at Peterloo in 1819 and its attempts to create a fairer
society and a increased suffrage to the working masses. What
happened that day at Peterloo evoked many to want change and yet,
those who held onto the structures of power would fail to listen fully.
Two-hundred years later things have certainly improved and yet we
find ourselves still prepared to take to the streets in order to protest
to make a fairer society. It is this conflict between the masses and
those in power that is running theme throughout this issue.
From those wishing to make their voices heard at the ballot box, those
who wanted to end the concept of slavery and those who fought for
the rights of workers welfare and pay, this issue has it all covered.
We also look at the methods of protest. From violence, to poetry and
music, and using your influence in order to speak on behalf of the
oppressed. All methods may be questioned in terms of their
effectiveness yet all played their part in helping to change things.
There is, of course, a lot more that could have been added. This
reminds us that the history of protest is a complicated one. A history
that effects us all, and more importantly, a history that is too
important to ignore. Our right to protest currently finds itself under
threat. I hope that this issue reminds us all of its importance and why
we have to hold it so dearly to our hearts. Two hundred years ago,
those at St Peter’s Field wanted a say in how their country was
governed...lets make sure that we never forget them.
N I C K K E V E R N
Editor-in-Chief
PROTEST, REVOLT
& REFORM
21
INSIDE
HISTORY
EDITOR
N I C K K E V E R N
DEPUTY EDITOR
H36
A N N A H P R I N G L E
DESIGN
N K D M E D I A
CONTRIBUTORS
Helen Antrobus
Alycia Asai
Tom Daly
James Hobson
Nick Kevern
Claire Miles
Rachel Lee Perez
Professor Robert Poole
Hannah Pringle
Ben Purdie
Olivia Richardson
Olivia Smith
IMAGES
Bundesarchiv
Colorgraph Co
Library of Congress
Smithsonian
Pickpik
Pikrepo
Pixabay
Unsplash
Wellcome Collection
Wikimedia Commons
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SUBSCRIPTION
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INSIDE
THIS ISSUE
06
Peterloo: How women’s bravery helped change
British politics forever
Professor Robert Poole
34
If There Is A Will, There Is A Way: THE
DEFIANT DISABLED SUFFRAGETTE
Olivia Smith
10
12
18
22
26
30
The rebecca riots: PROTEST & PETTICOATS
Claire Miles
john brown's raid on harpers ferry
Nick Kevern
BLOODY SUNDAY AT TRAFALGAR SQUARE
James Hobson
THE NEW YORK GARMENT STRIKE OF 1909
Alycia Asai
CHRISTABEL PANKHURST: Deeds not words
Olivia Richardson
Annie Kenney: The overlooked suffragette
Tom Daly
38
44
48
52
56
60
A PORTRAIT OF PROTEST: THE SUFFRAGETTES
WHO SMASHED PAINTINGS
Helen Antrobus
BILLIE HOLIDAY & THE IMPACT OF STRANGE FRUIT
Inside History
Where words fail...music speaks
Ben Purdie
Protest & Sport: SHUT UP AND DRIBBLE?
Rachel Lee Perez
The March on Washington
Hannah Pringle
WIR SIND DAS VOLK! We are the people!
Nick Kevern

INSIDE
HISTORY

PETERLOO
A coloured print of the Peterloo Massacre published by Richard Carlile (Public Domain/ Manchester Libraries)
06 INSIDE HISTORY

How women’s
bravery helped
change British
politics forever
Professor Robert Poole
University of Central Lancashire
St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester: the year is
1819, and a crowd of around 60,000
peaceful pro-democracy and antipoverty
protesters have gathered to hear radical
speaker Henry Hunt call for parliamentary
reform. What should have been a peaceful
appeal, ends with an estimated 18 dead
and hundreds injured.
This was a time in Britain’s history when
most people didn’t have the vote and
many regarded the parliamentary system
– which was based on property ownership
and heavily weighted towards the south of
England – as unrepresentative and unfair.
Factory workers had very few rights and
most of them worked in appalling
conditions.
As Hunt began his speech, the order was
given for him to be arrested. After he had
given himself up and again urged the
crowd to order, the volunteer Manchester
Yeomanry Cavalry attacked the platform,
the flags, and those around with sabres,
while special constables weighed in with
truncheons. A charge into the panicking
crowd by the 15th Hussars completed the
rout.
As well as an attack on the working
classes, Peterloo was also an episode of
violence against women. According to the
historian Michael Bush, women formed
perhaps one in eight of the crowd, but
more than a quarter of those injured.
They were not only twice as likely as men
to be injured, but also more likely to be
injured by truncheons and sabres.
This was no accident, for female
reformers formed part of the guard for
the flags and banners on the platform,
which were attacked and seized by the
Manchester Yeomanry cavalry as soon as
Henry Hunt had been arrested. But how
did the women come to be in such an
exposed position and why were they
attacked without quarter?
The female reform societies of
Lancashire were a novelty, formed in the
summer of 1819 in the weeks before the
great Manchester meeting of August 16.
They were not asking for votes for
women, but they were claiming the vote
for families, and a say in how that vote
was cast. In an address which was to
have been presented on the platform at
Peterloo, The Manchester Female
Reformers declared that “as wives,
mothers, daughters, in their social,
domestic, moral capacities, they come
forward in support of the sacred cause of
liberty”.
They were there supporting their
husbands, fathers and sons in the
struggle for a radical reform of
parliament. They took care to be
feminine, but not what we would call
feminists, yet they stretched the
boundaries of femininity to breaking
point and, in the eyes of government
loyalists, renounced their right to
special treatment.
More provocative still, parties of female
reformers on reforming platforms
presented flags and caps of liberty to
the male reform leaders. The cap of
liberty had been the symbol of
revolution in France, but on the
Manchester Reformers’ flag it was
carried by the figure of Britannia, as
shown on English coinage until the
1790s.
This ceremony took the patriotic ritual
of women presenting colours to
military regiments and adapted it to
radical ends. The Manchester Female
Reformers planned to proclaim:
May our flag never
be unfurled but in
the cause of peace
and reform, and
then may a female’s
curse pursue the
coward who deserts
the standard.
INSIDE HISTORY 07

PETERLOO
At previous meetings, the authorities had been unable to
capture the radical colours and had suffered some
humiliating rebuffs. The volunteer Yeomanry at
Manchester were determined to reverse these defeats.
When he heard the women would be on the platform
again at Manchester, the Bolton magistrate and spymaster
Colonel Fletcher wrote privately that such meetings “ought
to be suppressed, even though in such suppression, a
vigour beyond the strict letter of the law may be used in so
doing”. With Fletcher looking on, this was exactly what
happened at Peterloo.
‘Women beaten to the
ground by truncheons’
Mary Fildes, president of the Manchester Female
Reformers, is depicted in prints waving a radical flag from
the front of the platform as the troops attack. She guarded
her flag until the last minute, then jumped from the
platform, catching her white dress on a nail and being cut
by a sabre as she struggled to get free.
As she ran, she was beaten to the ground by a special
constable who seized her embroidered handkerchief-flag,
and then dodged another sabre blow and escaped into
hiding for the next fortnight – although badly wounded she
survived and continued to campaign for the vote.
Others were arrested in her stead and detained for days
without trial in wretched conditions. One of them,
Elizabeth Gaunt, suffered a miscarriage afterwards – her
unborn child is listed as one of the victims of Peterloo on
the new memorial in Manchester.
George Cruikshank’s famous graphic images of troops
attacking defenceless women and children formed the
enduring image of Peterloo in the public mind. After this
propaganda disaster, next time round, in 1832, the
government dared not risk sending in troops against
unarmed crowds of reformers gathered in cities such as
Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. The House of Lords
backed down at the third time of asking and the Great
Reform Act was passed.
Behind Britain’s famous long history of gradual reform lay
the shock of Peterloo. And behind the granting of the
franchise to more men lay the bravery of women.
Visit The Conversation for more great historical and
political articles at www.theconversation.com/uk
Caricature by George Cruikshank depicting the charge upon the rally
08 INSIDE HISTORY

PETERLOO
A print published on 27 August 1819 depicting Hunt's arrest by the constables
(Public Domain)
INSIDE HISTORY 09

REBECCA RIOTS
PROTEST &
PETTICOATS
THE REBECCA RIOTS
Words: Claire Miles
Intelligence gathering and the use of sex has been around for longer
than you might have thought. It was even a tactic used in the 16th
Century as Catherine De Medici proved. But what and who were her
now famous "Flying Squadron"? Melissa Barndon explains more about
this seductive squadron of spies.
10 INSIDE HISTORY

When studying the role of protest in British history, people
invariably look to the 19th Century, to the Luddites and the
Chartists, to Peterloo and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. But at the
same time in rural Wales there was a very different type of
protest going on.
It was the summer of 1839 when three tollgates were
attacked at Efailwen near Saint Clears in Carmarthenshire.
These attacks were carried out by gangs of men dressed in
women’s clothing with blackened faces, who came to be
known as Rebecca and her daughters, or Merched Beca in
the native Welsh language.
This moniker was probably a reference to the chapter of
Genesis in the Bible – ‘And they blessed Rebekah and said
unto her, Let thy seed possess the gates of those that hate
thee’ – however, some theorise a much more practical reason
for this name. Local lore says the leader of these initial riots, a
farm labourer called Twm Carnabwth, was so well built he
could only borrow petticoats from one particularly large lady
in the area, and her name happened to be Rebecca.
But why had the inhabitants of South West Wales started
protesting in such a fashion? For the large part, they were
protesting for the same reasons as the Chartists. From 1837
onwards, Britain experienced an economic depression.
Unemployment was high, as were food prices, and wages
were low. In West Wales the situation was exacerbated by
dramatic population increases in some local areas, which in
turn increased competition for land and jobs. The Whig
Government fell in 1841, partly due to their failure to handle
the serious economic situation, and it was no coincidence
that the activity of the Rebecca Riots peaked only a year later.
The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was also a significant
motivator to both Rebecca and the Chartists alike. As well as
the resulting rise in poor law rates in rural areas, the new law
meant that the able-bodied poor would be forced to live in
the dreaded workhouse with its harsh conditions. In
Carmarthen this hatred of the dreaded institution eventually
crystallised in June 1843 when a crowd of 2000 people
destroyed the local workhouse.
Turning to more localised factors, tolls were a big expense for
small farmers in rural Wales. They had to travel distances to
take their goods to market, but also to collect lime, which was
essential for improving the quality of the soil in
Carmarthenshire.
The vast majority of roads came under the control of various
turnpike companies, leading to a fragmented road network
with multiple tollhouses. There were twelve turnpike trusts
and over 100 toll gates in Carmarthenshire alone. Many
unscrupulous people took advantage of the loophole that,
while tolls were limited by statute, there was no legal limit to
the number of tollgates that could be set up. It did not help
that many trusts chose not to spend their income on
maintaining the roads, and the state of the road network was
generally deemed as abysmal.
Combined with a succession of bad harvests and a poor
agricultural market, it soon became one toll too many for the
local farmers. Hatred of the tollgates meant they became the
focus of the attacks. They were a convenient and tangible
symbol of the many grievances of the suffering working class,
and there were plenty of them around for farmers to get their
hands on.
These attacks and the Rebecca Riots must be considered in
the context of the ceffyl pren (wooden horse) tradition, which
was commonplace in rural Wales at the time. This was a
ritual-heavy communal method of enforcement and policing,
where someone who had offended the community’s values
was frightened or punished by ‘the mob’. For the protestors,
the riots were simply an extension of their self-policing
activity.
After a gap of a few years, attacks restarted in October 1842,
again in the St Clears area. Activity soon spread throughout
the county of Carmarthenshire and into other parts of rural
Wales. The attacks generally seemed leaderless, which
frustrated authorities in their attempts to stop the
movement. As well as the geographical coverage of the riots
increasing, the scope of the attacks increased too. In Mid
Wales at Rhayader, where there were seven roads and nine
gates, Rebecca made regular appearances, and illegitimate
children known to belong to prominent men in the
community found themselves returned to their fathers.
Rebecca and her daughters also targeted Anglican clergyman,
in protest at a predominately Non-Conformist population
having to pay tithes to the Church – another grievance that
was quite distinct to Wales.
By the summer of 1843, the riots were getting out of control,
and after repeated requests the military was dispatched to
West Wales. On the 7th of September the young female
keeper of the tollgate at Hendy near Pontarddulais was killed,
and the following month three rioters were exiled to Van
Diemen’s Land. Local enthusiasm for the attacks started to
peter out, and the last events associated with Rebecca were
probably those in the Rhayader area on September 13th
1844.
As well as deploying troops, the government was seen by
many as acting constructively. In October 1843 a commission
to inquire into the causes of the Rebecca Riots was
established. The report of the commission, published in
March 1844, led to The Turnpike Act (also known as Lord
Cawdor’s Act) which received royal assent in August of the
same year. The act established boards in each of the
counties of South Wales to oversee the management of the
turnpike roads, and the situation greatly improved.
With the passing of the Act Rebecca and her daughters had
won an important victory, but historians still debate how
much impact this victory had on the everyday lives of people,
as the tollhouses were just one part of a much larger
problem for the ordinary man. Even though the Rebecca
Riots were not borne of politics, if you view it through a
political lens it becomes a story about a leaderless uprising of
a much-put-upon working class that fought to obtain justice –
and won. It is for that reason that the riots have become an
important event in Welsh history, one that still pervades our
popular culture to this day, and Merched Beca is still a term
synonymous with protest in the Land Of My Fathers.
INSIDE HISTORY 11

To some, John Brown was a revolutionary
hero fighting a worthy crusade against
slavery. To others, he was a traitor and a
terrorist. Yet, his failed raid on Harpers Ferry
ignited the flame that would eventually see
the United states of America at war with
itself.
JOHN
BROWN'S
RAID ON
HARPERS
FERRY
12 INSIDE HISTORY

“I have been whipped, as the saying goes, but I am sure I can recover all the
lost capital occasioned by that disaster by only hanging a few minutes by
the neck. And I feel quite determined to make the utmost possible out of my
defeat.”
A letter by John Brown to his wife whilst in
Charles Town Prison, 1859.
John Brown was a complicated man. A man who saw his
actions as a just cause in the biblical sense of an "eye for an
eye". That was the kind of justice that Brown held onto
deeply. His life before Harpers Ferry was one of frustration
and limited success. He tried twenty different business
ventures of one kind or another. All ended in failure, several
of which ended in lawsuits and bankruptcies with one even
seeing John Brown serving in a debtor’s prison. In many
respects, he was a failure waiting for an opportunity to
shine brightly in the horizon. In joining the fight for the
abolition of slavery, Brown hoped to achieve that but would
fail once more as his doomed raid at Harpers Ferry would
see him hang. Yet, his name and legacy would live on.
In December 1858, John Brown and small band of men
entered Missouri. They attacked three small plantations
seizing 11 slaves and killing one owner. He then engaged in
an 82 day, 1000 mile trek in order to get the freed slaves
over to Canada. It was possibly the greatest
accomplishment of his life. This time, he actually made a
difference. It would become more personal for Brown as
during the journey one of the freed slaves gave birth to a
boy, he was named John Brown Daniel.
Brown was no stranger to violence when it came to the
cause of slavery. The passing of the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850 imposed severe penalties on those who aided
runaway slaves. As a response to this Brown founded the
militant group, The League of Gileadites. The League were
determined to help the runaway slaves by any means
necessary.
News would reach Brown that the state of Kansas was in
danger of becoming a slave state. The Kansas-Nebraska Act
allowed the state to make its own choice on whether or not
to accept the use of slavery. With both pro and anti slavery
factions moving into the state, it would soon become a
powder keg waiting for a spark. On May 24, 1856, armed
with rifles, knives and broadswords, Brown and his men
stormed into the pro-slavery settlement of Pottawatomie
Creek, dragged the settlers out of their homes and hacked
them to pieces, killing five and severely wounding several
others.
Daguerreotype of the abolitionist, John Brown, taken by African-American photographer Augustus Washington. Brown
is holding the hand-colored flag of Subterranean Pass Way, his militant counterpart to the Underground Railroad.
(Left to Right) Osborne Perry Anderson, Lewis Sheridan Leary, Dangerfield Newby,
John Anthony Copeland Jr, Shields Green
INSIDE HISTORY 13

For Brown, the continued talk of the abolitionist movement
was getting the cause nowhere. What was needed in his
view, was action. Blood would needed to be shed in order
to free the enslaved. In many respects, Brown would be
proven correct as only a couple of years after his actions at
Harpers Ferry, the United States of America would turn
against each other leading to a bloody Civil War where the
concept of Slavery was high on the agenda.
Not everyone agreed with John Brown’s plan to start an
insurrection against slave owners in 1859. Frederick
Douglass, the former slave turned abolitionist, might have
not have agreed with Brown’s methods but he certainly
admired his passion. Yet, he feared for his friend’s brave
plan to raid the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in order to
arm a slave rebellion against their oppressors. In Douglass
eyes, Brown and his small band of rebels were "going into a
perfect steel trap" warning Brown that he "would never get
out alive". Douglass, like many others declined the invitation
to join the raid at Harpers Ferry.
Harpers Ferry as a target made perfect sense to John
Brown. Inside the federal arsenal were 100,000 rifles and
muskets. Within the six countries of Harpers Ferry there
were approximately 18,000 slaves. If they joined him, it
would be enough to form an army. Twenty-one men would
join Brown for the raid on Harpers Ferry. Five of those men
were freed and fugitive slaves. The plan was simple. To
attack Harpers Ferry, secure the arsenal, hope others join
the insurrection and then flee into the blue ridge
mountains of Virginia using guerrilla tactics to attack
plantations and in doing so, grow his army before taking on
Richmond.
Despite his success the previous year, failure would once
again haunt Brown. Upon entering Harpers Ferry, a train
was approaching. The rebels stopped the train but within a
few hours, Brown let the train go. At the next town, the
conductor contacted Washington saying that “One Man and
Two hundred men are attacking Harpers Ferry!” President
Buchanan immediately ordered Robert E Lee to take care of
the situation and crush the insurrection. Despite the stand
off, Brown would be captured in the engine house along
with five others. Twelve of his men would die at Harpers
Ferry whilst four escaped.
John Brown would face three charges during his trial.
Treason, Murder and inciting slave insurrection. All were
punishable by death. His trial would begin on the 27th
October 1859 and would last only three and half days. It
would take the jury only 45 minutes to find him guilty of all
charges. His execution date was set as December 2, 1859.
For the other men who were captured the charge of
treason was dropped but they would still be found guilty of
the other charges. Shields Green, John Copeland Jr, John
Edwin Cook and Edwin Coppock would all face the
hangman’s noose. Green sent word to Brown that he was
glad to have fought with him, and awaited his death
willingly.
General Robert E. Lee
During his time in prison awaiting execution, the coverage
of John Brown’s raid intensified. From jail, he wrote
approximately 100 letters to newspaper editors around the
country as well as his family. In doing so, he aimed to
establish his own case and begin the process of writing his
own history. Opinions about John Brown and the actions of
his rebels began to take hold on the national conscience. To
those who supported anti-slavery he was seen as a Martyr
yet to others who opposed his actions, he was a traitor. In
polarising the opinions of the country, Brown had
unwittingly succeeded in bringing the question about
slavery to the limelight.
Following his execution, white abolitionist's who had
supported Brown with money and support in order to
bankroll the raid had fled north to Canada. Frederick
Douglass would join them given his close connections to
Brown. A Federal Marshall arrived at Douglass’s home one
day after he fled. It was a narrow escape.
In the aftermath of the raid on Harpers Ferry and Brown’s
execution many have fought for his reputation. American
philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson would call Brown: “The
rarest of heroes, a pure idealist with no by-ends.”
Even today, John Brown and his actions at Harper Ferry
leads historians, educators and even the general public to
ask questions. Was he a revolutional hero? Was he a
terrorist? Were his actions so morally just that it justified
the ends? Was he a fanatical madman who put his own
vanity and glory ahead of what was actually achievable? In
truth, John Brown is all of those things. A complicated
failure that ultimately succeeded through the actions that
were his preferred method of negotiations. That being,
violence, war and brother fighting brother in what would
become the American Civil War. It was only through that
bloodshed that slavery would finally end. A bloodshed that
began at Harpers Ferry.
14 INSIDE HISTORY

EMPEROR
BRINGING SHIELDS
GREEN TO THE BIG
SCREEN
"Hundreds of thousands of slaves attempted to escape and
over 100,000 actually succeed. Why don’t we talk about
that?"
Mark Amin, the writer and Director of Emperor was making
a very good point. It's not as if Hollywood hasn't made
movies about slavery before. Yet for his new movie, he has
decided to tell a story about a man who not only escaped
from his enslavers, but would go on to participate in the
Raid on Harpers Ferry where the aim was start a slave
revolt against their enslavers and the system of slavery.
Amin continued by saying: "I thought it would be really
interesting to make a movie about the slave who fought
back. That was when we started to look around for those
who did that. We looked at many stories and when we
came across Shields Green, suddenly I thought, oh my god,
this guy has connected all the dots. He was only 23, he had
a five year old son, he ran away and made it to freedom, he
met John Brown, he met Frederick Douglass, he took part in
Harpers Ferry and Harpers Ferry was taken back by Robert
E Lee. These are three of the most prominent figures in
American History. Shields Green crossed paths with all of
these people."
Yet the story of Shield Green is a largely untold one. In
terms of historical evidence, his is a history that is sparse in
details. It is an issue that makes the telling of his story
somewhat problematic yet completely compelling and
necessary. Turning someone who has been but a footnote
in American history into the central focal point of a movie
He could have gone to Canada and
lived happily ever after but instead
Shields Green chose to fight knowing
that this could be a suicide mission.
was an issue as Amin freely admits:
Mark Amin, Writer/Director
"Nobody really knows about his journey when he escaped
the plantation. We did a lot of research and found nothing.
We even looked for descendants of him but we couldn’t
find any. We tried to stay as faithful as we could to his
character and the major events. His meeting with John
Brown and Frederick Douglass. The dialogue for that is
accurate from the historical records that we have."
Film makers, when dealing with historical figures, are often
accused of taking liberties with the real lives that they aim
to portray. In telling the story of Shields Green, Amin
focuses on what is already known with enough creative
license available to him to form a character that we really
should be celebrating as a man of defiance alongside the
abolitionist, John Brown.
"He could have gone to Canada and lived happily ever after
but instead Shields Green chose to fight knowing that this
could be a suicide mission. To me that was so unique and
showed what a heroic character he was and yet, we don’t
really know that story."
16 INSIDE HISTORY

Bringing Shields Green to life is Dayo Okeniyi who delivers a
performance that is both powerful and emotive. When
asked what about his reasoning for taking on the role,
Okeniyi had nothing but admiration for Green, despite first
hearing about him through the script:
"When the script arrived I thought , why don’t I know about
this story? Why isn’t this a bigger story. A story about
rebellion, about a man in the 1800’s that took agency of his
own life. He had the chance to be free but chose to go back
and to fight for freedom for all men. I was moved by that
and moved by the idea that no one knows the story and I
wanted be a part of the people who told this story. We
ignorantly think that we know so much about this era yet
we find out there are heroes that fell through the cracks.
Their stories deserve to be told. They were a domino effect
that eventually led to the Civil War that led to the
Emancipation Proclamation and the reconstruction era, Jim
Crow and then the civil rights movement. It's American
History and those stories deserve to be told."
Researching Green for the role, Okeniyi hit the similar
stumbling blocks as the writer.
"Shields Green is the first character I’ve played who was a
real person. Because he is not well known I could take
some creative liberties in the way he walked, the way he
talked. There’s little about him so you reverse engineer who
you think this man was. I studied traits that people who
were enslaved would have. What is the physiological
trauma of someone who has been in a situation like that?
How much self realisation do they have? How aware of
themselves as a person are they? Is there any kind of vanity
at all?"
Some fragments of the life of Shields Green were available
in the form of The Narrative of Frederick Douglass. It was
the key text studied by Okeniyi: "I started with Frederick
Douglass’s autobiography where Shields is mentioned very
briefly but it paints such an amazing gesture portrait of him.
He was described as man not to shrink away from a
challenge."
Perhaps it is fitting that both Amin and Okeniyi are similar
to Shields Green themselves. In making a movie about a
man where there is little historical evidence they have still
chosen to bring to life his story. They have done so because
they believe in him so much. They believe in Green's
courage and admire him greatly. In describing Green,
Douglass told us of a man who did didn't shrink away from
a challenge and neither have Amin and Okeniyi. In doing so,
the name of Shields Green and his partcipation alongside
John Brown at Harpers Ferry will continue to live on.
He had the chance to be free but
chose to go back and to fight for
freedom for all men. I was moved
by that and moved by the idea
that no one knows the story
Dayo Okeniyi on why he took on
the role of Shields Green
Emperor is available to digitally
stream and out now on DVD from
all good retailers and Amazon.
Many thanks to Mark Amin, Dayo
Okeniyi, and Kaleidoscope
Entertainment
INSIDE HISTORY 17

19th Century
BLOODY
SUNDAY AT
TRAFALGAR
SQUARE
Words: James Hobson
In the autumn of 1887, William Morris
was convinced that the revolution was
imminent. All the signs were there. The
capitalist system that he and other
socialists loathed seemed to be dying.
The mid Victorian boom was over and
the 1880s were a time of rising
unemployment –indeed the word was
first used in this decade. The discontent
was now physically evidenced by the
occupation of Trafalgar Square by the
homeless, desperate and starving. There
were speeches and agitation by socialists,
anarchists and Irish nationalists; the
tricolour, the red flag and the black flag
of anarchy were flying in a space
designed to celebrate Britain’s martial
greatness.
There were regular meetings and
demonstrations by the unemployed and
about five hundred people sleeping in
the square overnight in defiance of police
orders. The unseasonably dry weather
had been lovely for Queen Victoria’s
Golden Jubilee but had led to agricultural
depression and migration into the
capital; the docks and the sugar
refineries were idle and there seemed no
prospect of improvement. The
Conservative government had chosen
coercion in Ireland, and famine and
evictions had raised tensions both in
Ireland and amongst the Irish working
class in East London and other British
cities. Here, according to Morris and
many others, was the raw material that
revolution could be fashioned from. As
one of the members of the new
Socialist movement Morris was
convinced that the revolution was nigh
and that large masses of protesters
would be a catalyst for bringing down
the system he despised so much.
He had another reason to be hopeful.
The masses meeting in Trafalgar Square
had intimidated the authorities a year
earlier, in 1886. A relatively peaceful
mass meeting of the unemployed was
turned into a riot by the desperation of
the poor and the deliberate incitement
of two of Morris’s fellow socialists, Henry
Hyndman and John Burns. They were
part of the Social Democrat Federation,
Britain’s first Marxist political party
(Morris and others had split and
formed the Socialist League). The
meeting had been called by another
organisation, the Fair trade League, who
advocated protectionism as a solution
to mass unemployment; either way, the
economic situation was being exploited
by political agitators.
A tense meeting was turned violent by
this political activism and afterwards
5,000 marched down Pall Mall. ‘To the
clubs’ was the cry, which was not
surprising considering the way that
Burns (and to a lesser extent Hyndman)
had spoken to the crowd. Burns had
allegedly said that hanging was too
good for some people, as it would spoil
the rope, and in a more fatal version of
the eighteenth century cry of ‘bread or
blood’, called for ‘bread or lead’. The
Carlton Club was attacked and shops
raided, and they insulted gentlewomen
openly in the street. It ended up with a
baton charge in Oxford Street which
finally dispersed the demonstrators.
Before the police attack, the shops had
been looted. These became known as
the West End Riots, which was a fair
description of events, but none of it
would have been possible without the
large, flat, unfenced Trafalgar Square as
a focal point.
In the days after the riot there was a
rush on behalf of the rich to help the
poor. Up to now, the Lord Mayor’s
Mansion House Relief Fund had
languished, amounting to less than
£3000 on the day of the riot; two days
later it was £75,000. Hyndman was
18 INSIDE HISTORY

cynical about their motives. Their ‘swift-born pity’ was
‘quite undistinguishable from craven fear’, he gloated.
The message was clear- mass politics was effective; it
extracted concessions and reduced the confidence of
the authorities. The victims of the Conservative policiesthe
poor, the homeless and the oppressed Irish- could
be used as weapons. Surely one more mass mobilisation
of the poor organised by radicals and socialists would
bring the whole rotten edifice down?
The new London Commissioner of Police, Sir Charles
Warren, looked on with concern as well. He saw a
rootless, desperate mob that was prone to the
influence of revolutionary forces. He envisaged an
obvious threat to property and the bastions of the
establishment that lay close to the square, which was
very much what Morris, Hyndman and Burns saw as well.
Sir Charles was appointed in March 1886 as a direct
result of the events of February 8. He was very much a
military man; not somebody who was willing to negotiate
with agitators and his appointment was very much hailed
for that reason. It was going to be all iron fist and no
velvet glove.
The location of the square was part of the problem.
Before it was built, the area was a transport hub for the
royal family, precisely because it gave easy access to
everywhere that mattered. That was still the case when
the square was constructed in the 1840s. It was at a
crucial juncture in London- where the poor of the East
End met the West End, and within striking distance of the
Palace of Westminster and the clubs of St James, which
was just about tolerable as long as it remained a figure of
speech. It was built as a commemoration of imperial
power not as a democratic space, and crowds were
actively discouraged by the steps, bronze lions and the
sold plinths of military heroes. The famous fountains
were placed there in 1845 to deflect the heat of the sun
but also there to make congregating and moving about
difficult.
By the autumn of 1887, the situation was critical again.
The fountains were full of the poor washing themselves
as they camped, homeless in the square, and this
reached a height in the summer of 1887. These were
mainly the destitute rather than the politically active; but
the activists were everywhere, and the square was being
used as a base to challenge the authorities. On 12
October the unemployed marched to Bow Street
Magistrates and demanded material help. The chief
police magistrate Sir James Ingram (‘he has £1800 a year
and no interruption of employment’, sniffed the radical
Reynolds Newspaper) offered them places in the casual
ward in a local workhouse instead. When the protestors
said they would rather rob a baker’s shop and go to jail,
Ingham called them ‘impertinent’, but the threat was real.
On 16 October, a Sunday, the protestors paraded at
Westminster Abbey under the leadership of agitators
with red and black flags. When they arrived to attend
divine service, they were told that it was full and they
Sir Charles Warren, London Commissioner of Police (Public
Domain)
were too late. They backed off, but what might happen
next time?
MOB WINNING! UNCHALLANGED POSESSION OF THE
SQUARE! POLICE LOOKING BLANDLY ON! said most
newspapers, in a panic; but it was never true. Both the
law and brute force were being used, successfully, and in
retrospect it seems odd that so many radical and
socialist groups thought the mobilisation of these
desperate people could leverage political change.
Three days after the ‘Bow Street impertinence’, the police
attacked a meeting of the unemployed, trampling them
down with horses and clubbing people. The homeless
were offered places at the casual ward of the Endell
Street workhouse. The workhouses themselves, like all
workhouses in London, were full; some who took up the
offer ran away when they saw the conditions there, and
preferred to freeze in the Square. Warren and the
newspapers asked people not to provide them with food
and drink, as it would only encourage more people into
idleness. Many newspapers referred to them in speech
marks as the ‘unemployed’.
Most people were driven out on 19 October but the
whole process was problematic. It was soaking up police
resources- 2000 officers every weekend- and nothing
was being achieved apart from highlighting the
precariousness of the system. The authorities needed to
regain control of crucial space; and the anxious
newspapers were egging them on.
Among those arrested and charged on 26 October with
‘wandering abroad without any visible means of
subsistence’ was Mary Ann Nichols. She had been
dismissed from a job as a servant in May 1887 and
preferred tramping and living outdoors to the
workhouse. She and others had refused the casual ward
INSIDE HISTORY 19

19th Century
of the workhouse and Nichols was described as the
‘worst women in the Square and very disorderly at the
station’; in August 1888 she was the first victim of Jack
the Ripper.
A few days earlier there had been another Sunday visit to
Westminster Abbey; this time starting at the radical hub
of Clerkenwell and finishing in Trafalgar Square, filling it
up with protest again. In between the mob/ protestors
managed to gain access to the Abbey this time; some
posed on pedestals; others smoked tobacco, smirked
and called out randomly; most refused to remove their
hats and spat on the floor. Canon George Prothero
(Harrow and Oxford) produced a finely balanced sermon
where he called for both punishments for the sinful and
state intervention to help the poor.
Sir Charles Warren had had enough. On November 8 he
requested/ insisted that the Conservative Home
Secretary, Herbert Matthews, banned all public meeting
and speeches from being held in Trafalgar Square, thus
adding another level of protest- it now became an issue
of free speech and assembly. His legal case was that it
was Crown property. This was a little dubious and led to
an immediate call for a demonstration on Sunday 13
November, with the dual purpose of protesting about
the treatment of Irish Nationalist MP William O’ Brien and
establishing the right to hold a meeting at Trafalgar
Square.
A demonstration was called for 4pm with speeches from
Hyndman, Burns and another radical leader Robert
Cunninghame Graham, probably the first socialist to be
elected to the Commons. It’s hard to see how they
expected to be successful. It was an attempt to occupy a
space already controlled by a well armed police force
with military back-up. The authorities would also know
exactly the routes the protesters would use. These
marches to the Square were also banned, which gave
the police a pretext to use violence on those in transit.
As Morris said- ‘so we walked into the net’. Victorian
radicals Annie Besant, Eleanor Marx, George Bernard
Shaw walked with Morris from Clerkenwell. They were
viciously attacked by a police baton charge at Holborn.
They made a rational decision and ran away; Shaw called
it ‘the most abjectly disgraceful defeat ever suffered by a
band of heroes’. William Morris also witnessed the
violence. He wrote that he ‘was astounded at the rapidity
of the thing and the ease with which military organisation
got its victory’
The Pall Mall Gazette reported that the Clerkenwell
contingent had no weapons, not even sticks. Even if they
were armed, and there was some retaliation by the
crowd later in the day, it would not have mattered. All
those radicals, nationalists and socialists who were
present received an object lesson in the power of a
confident, prosperous state with a monopoly on
violence. Hyndman, the hero (in his own mind) of the
West End riots was lost in the crowd and became an
anonymous victim, and John Burns was assaulted, and
arrested. Cunninghame Graham, like Burns, made it to
the Square but was assaulted by the police and beaten
up.
Those protestors- at least 10,000- who reached the
square suffered even worst treatment. At around 4pm
they were set upon by the police; cloaks covered the
numbers on their shoulders even if they could have been
identified in the chaos. Behind the police were mounted
cavalry, who broke into the mostly stationary lines of
protesters and then the police baton-charged them. It
was indiscriminate; even those who were running away
were followed and attacked. Some were crushed against
shop shutters in the Strand when they had nowhere else
to run. There was no attempt to engage, persuade or
offer routes to escape.
Many of those standing around were victims. Two
hundred people at least were injured, with many others
refusing to go to hospitals because of possible reprisals.
At least two people died as an indirect result of injuries
sustained. Swords were not drawn and the soldiers were
not told to open fire; so there were no deaths on the
day. However, the Life Guards did attack with fixed
bayonets. The day did not quite turn into Peterloo, but it
deserved its name, quickly acquired, of ‘Bloody Sunday’.
The next day the legal system rolled into action; 70
individuals were in front of the same Sir James Ingram
who had offered the unemployed nothing but the
workhouse. Later the same week, 20,000 special
constables were sworn in. Burns and Cunninghame
Graham served six weeks in Pentonville.
Most of the newspapers supported the police. Apart
from radical voices like the Pall Mall Gazette and
20 INSIDE HISTORY

Bloody Sunday, 1887. This engraving from The Illustrated London News depicts a
policeman being clubbed by a demonstrator as he wrests a banner from a female protester. (Public Domain)
Reynolds’s Newspaper, they blamed the protesters. They
had defied the law and paid the price; the idea that
unarmed protestors and spectators had been attacked
mercilessly was never mentioned. The Times reported
that the mob had tried and failed to turn placid English
Sunday into a carnival of blood. The police did not come
out of events completely unscathed; some radicals
openly condemned them as agents of the ruling class,
but it was these same radicals whose voice had been
dampened down. Sir Charles Warren did not know it yet,
but he and his force were to come under more criticism
in 1888 when they failed to find the Whitechapel
murderer.
Bloody Sunday did not stop demonstrations in and
around the Square. The Sunday afterwards, there was a
protest against police violence and a bystander was
crushed under a police horse; but radicals and socialists
had learnt a hard lesson. Monster meetings on their own
were not going to provoke a social revolution. The state
was far too strong and far too popular, and could
frighten people that their property was in danger.
The radicals and socialists took different paths. Burns,
who waved the Red Flag in 1887, was a liberal MP by
1893 and later a cabinet minister. Many socialists (and
Bloody Sunday created more of them) worked for
working class representation in parliament. Hyndman
decided that the time was not yet ripe, and that more
revolutionary agitation was needed. Others became
Trade Union organisers and were involved in the Match
Girls Strike and the Great Dock Strike of 1888. Bernard
Shaw relied on words to make his arguments.
Cunninghame Graham, despairing of Tory policies in
England, became an early Scottish Nationalist.
Protests in Trafalgar Square continue to this day, and
some, like the Poll Tax riots of 1990, have been politically
significant. Yet the key question of 1887 remains
unresolved today; what are the rights and
responsibilities of angry protesters who wish to meet in
public places? How much free speech and free assembly
is healthy, and who makes that decision?
James Hobson has taught and written about
history for twenty-five years. His previous books
include The Dark Days of Georgian Britain and
Charles I's Executioners: Civil War, Regicide and
the Republic. His latest book, Passengers: Life in
Britain during the Stagecoach Era is out now.
INSIDE HISTORY 21

20th Century
THE NEW YORK GARMENT STRIKE OF 1909
THE
FIGHT
BEFORE
THE
FIRE
2214 INSIDE | HISTORY

20th Century
In 1909, Clara Lemlich raised her voice about safety concerns at the Triangle
Factory in New York City. She was not alone as many textile workers would
strike with the same concerns. Whilst some factories would change their
practices, others held strong against the workers demands. Tragically, the
workers would be proven right as Alycia Asai explains more about The New
York Garment Strike of 1909.
She sat in the back of the union hall,
listening to one speaker after another
voice support for their cause, but remain
silent on a solution. She hoped the next
order of business would be to vote on a
call to strike. But the speeches kept
coming; frustrated, she quickly raised her
hand and requested to speak to the large
crowd. Making her way up the aisle, the
Ukrainian immigrant, who had a
reputation for being a troublemaker
and who was still nursing some broken
ribs thanks to strikebreakers stepped to
the microphone. In her native Yiddish,
she told the crowd, “I have no further
patience for talk as I am one of those
who feels and suffers from the things
pictured. I move that we go on a general
strike...now!” Her name was Clara Lemlich
and she is known as the voice to the
uprising of the twenty thousand, the first
general strike of the New York garment
district, and one of the largest strikes by
women in history. The strike of 1909 was
successful in many of its efforts, however
it failed to garner one key concession
from shop owners, ultimately leading to
one of the most devastating workplace
disasters in history.
At the turn of the century, New York was
a hot spot for the newly popular
shirtwaists. Memorialised by the Gibson
Girl, the shirtwaist - or blouse - was a hot
commodity rapidly spreading in
popularity across the country’s women.
Over six hundred shops employing nearly
thirty-two thousand workers were sewing
and piecing together upwards of fifty
million dollars-worth of merchandise
annually. To meet this high demand,
shop owners mandated workers show up
six days a week and toil long hours -
often requiring overtime during the busy
months, without increased pay incentive.
The workforce, made up largely of
immigrant women, labored up to sixty
hours a week and were paid $6 per
week, about $174 when adjusted for
inflation.
The women of the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory had been advocating for
increased pay, safer conditions, and
wanted the ability to form a union.
Frustrated with the deafening silence by
owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris,
the women walked off the job on
October 4, 1909. Tired of the deplorable
working conditions, fourteen-hour
workdays, and meager pay, the women
refused to return to work until Blanck
and Harris were ready to hear their
demands. The owners, however, would
hear nothing. Instead, they worked to
break the women; they hired prostitutes
to start fights and paid off thugs to
intimidate and physically assault the
striking workers. The women held firm,
picketing daily for six weeks.
Inspired by those fighting the Triangle
Factory, the International Ladies
Garment Workers called a meeting on
November 22 to determine the best
course of action. Would they continue
to labor in decrepit and unsafe working
conditions, or would they band together
and collectively demand better
treatment? Held at Cooper Union,
thousands of workers showed up to
debate their fate and vote for action.
Inspired by Lemlich’s speech, the
members present at the hall voted in
favor of a general strike, and the
following day, fifteen thousand workers
walked off the job in New York’s
Garment District. Their demands were
simple: better pay, lower hours, the
ability to organize, and safe working
conditions. The union organized picket
lines for the factories, culminating in
nearly twenty thousand workers from
five hundred shops refusing to work in
the largest industry-wide strike to date.
The Garment District was suddenly at a
standstill.
While nearly one hundred smaller
factories caved to many of the strikers'
demands within forty-eight hours, the
larger firms - led by the owners of
Triangle - were determined to break the
strike by any means necessary.
Employing tactics that would make
headlines today, the factory magnates
hired replacement workers, violent
strikebreakers, and paid off police to
make arrests for anyone who picketed
their shops. The physical mistreatment
of the picketers gained the attention of
the affluent women pushing for suffrage
who saw an opportunity to galvanize
the push for the rights to vote with the
plight of the immigrants demanding
better working conditions.
As women were arrested and given
exorbitant bails, Alva Belmont, wife of
Willliam Vanderbilt, started showing up
to court to pay their fines. Having the
backing of the wealthy and connected,
the press started to write pieces in
support of the strike and the factory
owners began losing the war of public
opinion. By December, word of the
strike reached Philadelphia, prompting
the city’s garment workers to also walk
off the job to demand better conditions.
A month into the strike, many of the
larger factories were tired of seeing
their profits diminish and prepared
themselves for negotiations, offering
tentative agreements to their
employees. The strikers were also
growing weary; fighting the battle alone
without government support and
lacking secure financial backing, they
had a choice to make; they could go
back with the guaranteed concessions,
INSIDE HISTORY 23

Portrait of Clara Lemlich (March 28, 1886 – July 25, 1982), leader of the
Shirtwaist Strike of 1909-1910 in New York. (Public Domain)
A January 1910 photograph of a group of women who
participated in the shirtwaist strike of 1909. (Public Domain)
24 INSIDE HISTORY

or risk a hard cold winter without any steady income. By
February 1910, thousands of strikers returned to work
satisfied with better pay, reduced hours, and a tepid
recognition of unions - although this recognition proved to
be in name only. But Blanck and Harris remained steadfast;
their original offer from December was the only one they
were willing to accept. The offer was for better pay and
shorter hours, but nothing addressing safety or recognizing
unions. As one of the last standing holdouts, the workers
accepted the terms.
The decision to go back with better pay but without
guaranteed safer working conditions in the spring of 1910
provided immediate financial relief to the strikers, but
ultimately sealed their fate and claimed the lives of over
one hundred workers. Just a year later on March 25, 1911,
a small fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Asch
Building, a twelve-story warehouse where Triangle
maintained operations. Likely sparked by a discarded
cigarette in a heap of scrap material, the fire quickly spread,
devouring the highly flammable cotton in mere minutes.
Unequipped with modern conveniences such as fire alarms
Bodies of the victims being placed in coffins on the sidewalk. (Public
Domain)
windows. One by one, bystanders and firemen watched
helplessly as the bodies of these young immigrant laborers
hit the concrete. In a fire that lasted less than thirty
minutes, 146 individuals lost their lives, 123 of them
women.
In the aftermath of the blaze, more than 350,000 people
took to the streets of Manhattan in a funeral procession to
honor the dead. Public outcry demanded action to
prevent such a disaster from occurring again. Within
months, New York created the Factory Investigating
Commission, which looked into almost two thousand
factories in various industries. Spurred by labour rights
activists like Frances Perkins, New York quickly passed a
series of laws aimed at protecting worker’s safety and
improving working conditions. This series of legislation
spread throughout the country and culminated with the
passage of the New Deal, where activist Perkins, the first
female member of the cabinet, instituted federal mandates
for worker protections. This included the Department of
Labor and the National Labor Relations Act, which codified
a worker’s right to organize and use collective bargaining in
the workplace.
and sprinklers, the inferno destroyed the production line
on the eighth floor while the workers above were oblivious
to the dangers below their feet.
By the time the upper floors learned of the blaze and
attempted to flee, options were limited. In an effort to
prevent material theft, the owners kept one stairwell exit
locked at all times, providing only one viable avenue for
workers to seek refuge. Some were able to get to safety via
the building's elevator, but as the inferno intensified, the
elevator was grounded. Scrambling for options, some
sought safety via the fire escape. As more women climbed
atop the rickety metal structure, the frame buckled, sending
them plummeting to their death. Suddenly, faced with the
choice of burning alive or taking their fates into their hands,
women began to leap from the ninth and tenth-floor
The women of Triangle helped galvanize a movement for
their fellow laborers in 1909 and shed light on the
horrendous conditions faced by those in the garment
industry. By igniting the largest industry wide strike and
attaining change through collective bargaining, laborers all
over the country began to see the power of using one voice
to force change. However, without the support of those in
power, they faced a difficult choice; they could take some
concessions or find a new job. Ultimately, it took the
largest workplace disaster to date and the death of over
one hundred individuals to call out in stark detail the need
for labor protections and unions. The women of 1909
started the fight, but the fire of 1911 proved to be the
catalyst for change.
Alycia holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History and believes the
study of history can be fun and exciting. She tries to bring
history to the masses in bite sized pieces through her
weekly history podcast, Civics and Coffee. You can reach
her through her website at www.civicsandcoffee.com
INSIDE HISTORY 25

FIGHTING TO VOTE
Deeds, not words
CHRISTABEL
PANKHURST
To some Christabel Pankhurst is seen as a heroine who dedicated her life
to the right for women to have their vote. To others, she is seen as a
symbol of terror that caused mayhem in her violent pursuit of women's
rights. The truth however lays somewhere in between as Olivia
Richardson explains.
Christabel Pankhurst was born on September 22, 1880,
in Manchester. She was the daughter of leading
suffrage activist Emmeline Pankhurst and the sister of
Sylvia Pankhurst. Christabel followed in her mother’s
footsteps in campaigning for women’s rights to vote.
She became a co-founder of the Women’s Social and
Political Union (WSPU) with her mother from 1903
to 1918. Christabel, labelled as the ‘Queen of the Mob,’
was known for pioneering the use of the WSPU’s
militant strategies in achieving women’s suffrage.
With an interest in politics and inspired by her father’s
career as a barrister, Christabel studied law at the
University of Manchester, graduating with a first-class
degree in 1906. However, she was unable to become a
lawyer because women were not permitted to enter
the legal profession. Despite this, Christabel used her
education to her advantage and her legal knowledge
became an asset towards her fight for women’s
suffrage. She acquired the skills to persuasively convey
her views about gender inequality through her public
speeches and pamphlets.
Under Christabel’s leadership, the WSPU developed the
use of militant tactics enforced by its motto of “Deeds
Not Words.” Women had campaigned for the right to
vote since the 1880s; however, Christabel believed
something had to change. Organisations such as the
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS)
led by Millicent Fawcett had tried to peacefully
persuade politicians to grant women the right to vote
by writing letters, creating petitions and holding public
meetings. For Christabel, peaceful protest was no
longer enough to secure democratic rights for women.
Christabel favoured a confrontational approach,
arguing that previous protestors had been far too
submissive. In a speech, she highlighted inequality
between men and women regarding protest,
stating: “Men got the vote, not by persuading but by
alarming the legislators. Similar vigorous measures
must be adopted by women.”
The slogan of “Deeds Not Words” was put into
action by Christabel on October 13, 1905, when she
and her friend Annie Kenney disrupted a Liberal
Party meeting held in the Free Trade Hall in
Manchester. They demanded answers from MPs
regarding women’s rights to vote, waving a banner
declaring "Votes for Women". Police forcibly
removed them from the meeting, resulting in
Christabel spitting at an officer. The women were
arrested and charged with assault after refusing to
pay fines. The event attracted media attention and
became a vital moment in highlighting the use of
civil disobedience from women fighting to achieve
the vote. The newspaper coverage of the protest
was an accomplishment in raising awareness
of the WSPU and its militant campaign. Christabel
later wrote: “Where peaceful means had failed, one
act of militancy succeeded and never again was the
cause by that or any other newspaper.”
After obtaining her degree in 1906, Christabel
moved to the WSPU’s headquarters in London
to start her role as the organising secretary of the
group. In 1908, Christabel along with her mother
and WSPU member Flora Drummond organised a
‘rush’ on the House of Commons by issuing
pamphlets to members of the public asking for
support. Days later, they held a rally in Trafalgar
26 INSIDE HISTORY

“Remember the
dignity of your
womanhood. Do
not appeal, do not
beg, do not grovel.
Take courage, join
hands, stand
besides us, fight
with us.”
Square where Christabel addressed a large
crowd of protestors. The three women were
later arrested and Christabel received a tenweek
prison sentence.
By 1909, pressure was building on the
government as it faced increasingly dangerous
tactics from the WSPU. Its strategies became
more extreme, with members going on hunger
strikes in prison and throwing stones at the
windows of government buildings. Therefore,
during his election campaign in January 1910,
Prime Minister H.H. Asquith intended to pass a
Conciliation Bill which would grant one million
women who owned property over the value
of £10 the vote. Indeed, this was a limited
amount of women, but it was a hopeful
development according to Christabel, who
decided to call a ‘truce’ by ceasing all militant
activity. However, this was short-lived and
hopes were brought to an end in June 1910,
when Asquith refused to allocate further
parliamentary time to the bill and dissolved
Parliament in November to hold a general
election. After this, the bill was never passed as
law.
With Christabel and Emmeline feeling betrayed
and tensions building, 300 members of the
WSPU stormed Parliament on November 18,
1910. Annie Kenney described the event as a
huge turning point, writing: “All the clouds that
had been gathering for weeks suddenly broke,
and the downpour was terrific. There was not
We are here to claim our
right as women, not only
to be free, but to fight for
freedom. That it is our
right as well as our duty.
Votes for Women 31 March 1911
INSIDE HISTORY 27

Meeting of Women's Social
& Political Union (WSPU)
leaders, c.1906 - c.1907
Flora Drummond,
Christabel Pankhurst,
Annie Kenny, Emmeline
Pankhurst, Charlotte
Despard with two others,
working round a kitchen
table. (PICRYL)
one of us who would not have gone to our death at that
moment, had Christabel so willed it.” The event soon became
known as ‘Black Friday,’ because the WSPU were met with
police brutality, facing violent beatings and sexual assault.
The events of ‘Black Friday’ provoked the WSPU’s sudden
escalating use of militancy. From 1912 to 1914, new violent
tactics were implemented, such as vandalism, arson and
bombings. The suffragettes would smash up windows of
banks and post offices, cut telephone wires and even
attacked paintings in art galleries. Attempts were made to
burn down the houses of two members of the government
who opposed the suffrage movement. Despite this, both
Christabel and Emmeline emphasised that there should not
be any danger to human life. Nonetheless, this seems
contradictory as the extremities of the vandalism and
violence definitely posed a great risk to the safety of both
members of the public and the suffragettes.
Christabel did not participate in these more extreme
protests because in 1912, she moved to Paris to avoid being
imprisoned, and therefore directed the militancy from the
sidelines. During her time in Paris, Christabel founded and
edited The Suffragette newspaper. The Daily Mail had first
created the nickname ‘suffragette’ in 1906 in an article
mocking the militant group of suffragettes. However,
Christabel only used this to her advantage, deciding to adopt
the term for her newspaper in which she encouraged the use
of militant tactics, documenting the many acts of arson and
vandalism. Other newspapers began to report weekly on the
attacks, expressing outrage and disapproval. By starting her
own newspaper, Christabel showed her strong ability as a
resilient leader to portray the WSPU and its aims in her own
words to members of the public.
Although members of the WSPU supported Christabel in her
militant approach to protest, she also faced criticism. For
instance, WSPU member Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence spoke
out against the violent campaigns, believing that they would
undermine the aims of the suffragettes and reduce
support. Christabel was not slow to take action and
arranged for Emmeline to be removed from the group.
Furthermore, Christabel’s extreme campaigns even
created a divide within her own family. The increasing
use of vandalism evoked conflict between Christabel
and her sister, Sylvia. Sylvia also disagreed with
Christabel’s decision to distance the WSPU from leftist
politics and instead, attract upper and middle class
women to the group. Christabel believed the cause
should be dedicated to women’s suffrage, and that
other issues concerning working-class women would
be solved once women were granted the vote. Sylvia
was consequently expelled from the WSPU in 1914 for
enforcing the idea that working-class women should
be involved in the movement, before setting up the
East London Federation of the Suffragettes (ELFS)
group. Christabel’s controversial views towards
working-class women made members of the group
question if the WSPU was really fighting on behalf of all
women, or rather the privileged few.
With the outbreak of World War One in 1914, the
WSPU halted all militant activity after the government
agreed to release the suffragettes from prison. The
WSPU’s focus changed to supporting the war effort,
with Christabel even changing the name of her
newspaper to the patriotic Britannia. As time went on,
the WSPU faded from public attention and was
dissolved in 1917. A year later, the Representation of
the People Bill was passed, allowing women over the
28 INSIDE HISTORY

(Above) Christabel Pankhurst, Flora Drummond and
Emmeline Pankhurst in court, 1908 (PICRYL)
(Right) Studio portrait of Christabel Pankhurst in academic
dress in 1905 (PICRYL)
age of 30 and men over the age of 21 to vote. It would
be another 10 years until women over the age of 21
could finally vote in 1928.
The militancy of the WSPU was not entirely successful
in achieving votes for women. However, there is no
denying that Christabel’s enforcement of militant
action added a new dimension to women’s protests for
equality. The use of violence and destruction
challenged the idea of how women were expected to
behave and proved how far women were willing to
go in order to achieve what they wanted. Furthermore,
Christabel was an excellent public speaker with the
ability to confidently voice women’s issues. More
importantly, she knew how to contrive new ways of
catching the attention of the media and the British
public to raise awareness of the suffragettes and
political inequality. Christabel was a strong and
powerful woman who was not afraid to eradicate any
obstacles that were in her way, even if it meant
dismissing members of her own family. Although
Christabel’s controversial leadership tactics were not
popular with everyone, she was still an extremely
influential figure within the women’s suffrage
movement.
Olivia Richardson is a History and
History of Art graduate from the
University of York. She has a keen
interest in writing about the lives
of forgotten women in history,
with a particular focus on female
artists.
INSIDE HISTORY 29

FIGHTING TO VOTE
Annie Kenney
THE
OVERLOOKED
SUFFRAGETTE
If you were asked to name a suffragette, the chances are that a member
of the Pankhurst family would be mentioned. Yet, the movement relied
heavily on the passion and leadership of others. Tom Daly from The
Ministry of History, takes a closer look at Annie Kenney who was also
essential to the cause.
Annie Kenney (1879–1953)
(Public Domain Library of Congress)
Friday, 13th October 1905 was a dreary autumn day
in Manchester, but there was excitement in the
air. In the city’s trade hall, the Liberal party, at this
time the only other major political party in Britain
along with the Conservatives, were holding a
meeting as they tried to gather momentum for the
general election the following year. During the
meeting a certain Winston Churchill, a young local
MP and one of the most radical members of the
Liberal leadership, took to the stage, but was
interrupted during his speech by a question from a
soft-looking, blue-eyed woman in her 20s. ‘If you
are elected, will you do your best to make women’s
suffrage a government measure?’ she asked.
Churchill was hesitant, and appeared
uncharacteristically lost for words. Receiving no
reply, the woman and her friend unfurled a banner
that had the slogan ‘votes for women’, and they were
swiftly thrown out of the meeting and arrested.
Of the two women arrested that day in Manchester,
one was suffragette royalty. She was Christabel
Pankhurst, daughter of the famous campaigner
Emeline Pankhurst and sister of Sylvia Pankhurst.
Together, the Pankhurst women would go on to
become the public face of the struggle to win
women the right to vote. The other woman, who
asked the question of Winston Churchill, is less well
remembered but sacrificed just as much for the
same cause. She had met Pankhurst only a few
30 INSIDE HISTORY

months previously and been utterly inspired, and her
arrest that day was the first of 13 arrests she would rack
up during her time as a campaigner. Her name was
Annie Kenney, and she was not only a fierce campaigner
for women’s suffrage but also a committed socialist. Her
soft features disguised a steel inside her that led her to
strike fear in the heart of the British establishment.
A childhood in poverty
Ann ‘Annie’ Kenney was born on 13th September 1879
in Springhead, which is now part of Greater Manchester,
the fifth of eleven children born to Nelson Horatio
Kenney and Anne Wood. The Kenney family were poor
and none of the children received much formal
education, although their mother taught all of them to
read and write. Annie would later recall that her mother
was an outgoing woman who encouraged all of her
children to think openly and express themselves, while
her father was a something of an introvert who ‘had
very little confidence in himself.’ Like all of her siblings,
Annie was forced to work from an early age to
supplement the family income. She started work at a
local cotton mill at the age of ten, losing one of her
fingers to an accident soon after. She worked long
hours and was expected to help with housework when
she returned home, an expectation that made her
develop a sense of solidarity with her mother, sisters
and other women around her. This gender solidarity
was complemented by her sense of class solidarity with
the working-class people she grew up with, as she
worked at the mill for a further 15 years and became
involved in Labour and Trade Union politics.
Introduction to the Women’s
suffrage movement
It was her involvement in Labour politics that led to her
meeting with Christabel Pankhurst in early 1905.
Pankhurst gave a speech on women’s voting rights at a
Labour party meeting that Annie attended with two of
her sisters, Jenny and Jessie. Annie was inspired by the
charismatic Pankhurst and immediately joined the
Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which
Pankhurst had recently formed with her mother and
sister, and within months the two new friends found
themselves interrupting Winston Churchill’s speech and
being arrested after a policeman claimed Pankhurst
spat on him as he tried to eject them from the meeting.
They were given the option of paying a fine or going to
prison, and they chose prison, knowing the publicity
would rally more women to their cause. Sure enough,
when Kenney was released after her short sentence she
was greeted outside the prison by a crowd of
supporters.
After her release, though Kenney had been scarred by
the harshness of life in an Edwardian prison, she
declared that there was no woman in the WSPU who
would not gladly go to prison ‘to win freedom for her
sisters.’ She began working for the organisation full time,
moving to London to lead the WSPU branch in the city’s
east end and developing a reputation as a passionate
and charismatic speaker. She was also known for her
publicity stunts. In 1906, after the Liberal party won a
landslide victory in the election, Kenney led a group of
women to the home of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
(and future Prime Minister) Herbert Asquith. She
knocked on the door incessantly and refused to leave,
securing herself another short prison sentence. On
another occasion, she unfurled a banner with the slogan
‘votes for women’ at the Royal Albert Hall.
In 1907, Kenney was sent to Bristol to run the WSPU in
the west of England. It is interesting to note at this point
that although she was fully committed to the
organisation and felt a sense of gender solidarity with
the Pankhursts and others, Kenney was one of the only
working-class women who were given leadership roles in
what was a very middle-class organisation. Kenney was a
feminist but also a socialist, sympathetic to the plight of
working-class men – many of whom also did not have
the right to vote – and carefully supportive of the truly
radical economic reforms the Liberal government
started to implement in 1906-1914.
INSIDE HISTORY 31

"We have got to
hold meetings,
but the only
thing you have
got to be is
militant! Militant!
And more
militant!!!"
Annie Kenney quoted by a Special Branch report on a suffragette meeting at Essex Hall, The Strand,
London, 31 January 1913 (Catalogue ref: HO 45/10695/231366) National Archives
Left: Suffragette poster urging people to vote against the Liberal government who passed the Cat and
Mouse Act (Picryl)
Still, the government was not paying attention to calls
for women’s suffrage, so more drastic action needed to
be taken. Kenney was heavily involved in theincreasingly
militant tactics of the WSPU, which included vandalism,
arson and chaining themselves to railings. In one
instance, a bomb was exploded outside the summer
home of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (and
another future Prime Minister) David Lloyd George. The
WSPU were always careful to ensure there was no
violence inflicted on people – Lloyd George and his
family were nowhere near the home when the bomb
went off – but the destruction of property was enough
to provoke a reaction from the government, and scores
of suffragettes were marched off to prison during this
time.
The WSPU then directed their members to go on
hunger strike in prison, which meant they would refuse
to eat and let themselves become seriously ill. It was
certainly an outlandish idea but there was a degree of
genius to it – the government could not afford to let the
women die in their prisons, if for no other reason than it
would be a PR disaster. Kenney herself fully understood
the power of PR and imagery, going on hunger strike
herself and ensuring that upon her release from prison
she was seen at meetings, carried on a stretcher, too ill
to stand up. To make oneself so dangerously sick takes
phenomenal courage and commitment, qualities which
Kenney had in spades.
Events appeared to be reaching a climax. In 1913, the
government introduced the Cat and Mouse Act, which
would allow for women on hunger strike to be released
from prison and then thrown back in once they had
recovered from illness. The previous year, Christabel
Pankhurst had fled to Paris to avoid arrest and left
Kenney in charge of the whole organisation. Unrelenting
as ever, she denounced the Cat and Mouse Act and
decided that the WSPU had no intention of letting up
their militant campaigns or hunger strikes. In June 1913,
Emily Davison was killed as she tried to attach a
suffragette slogan to the King’s horse during a race in
Epsom. It is doubtful whether Davison intended to kill
herself – she had purchased a return train ticket – but
Kenney ensured she was treated as a martyr. Slowly but
surely, votes for women was edging closer. The new
Labour party were likely going to insist that all their
candidates for Parliament at the next election support
women’s suffrage, and Sylvia Pankhurst was in secret
talks with David Lloyd George.
But then, suddenly, Europe was plunged into war. The
suffragette movement was split, between those who
wanted to carry on the fight against a distracted
government and those who wanted to pause the fight
and throw their weight behind the war effort, out of a
sense of patriotism and a sense that it would be good
for their public image. Annie Kenney was in the latter
camp. Together with the Pankhurst women she toured
the country speaking in support of the war and
encouraging women to support the national effort. The
32 INSIDE HISTORY

WSPU’s newspaper, Suffragette, was discontinued
briefly but returned in the middle of the war with a new
name, Britannia, and launched vicious attacks on
people deemed not to be supporting the war effort
enough.
In 1915 Kenney started working with David Lloyd
George, now Minister for Munitions, to call on women to
work in British factories. Millions of women heeded the
call, stepping up to replace the men in manufacturing
and agriculture. Kenney was now something of an
insider, speaking regularly with Lloyd George and
leading public anti-communist demonstrations, a
seemingly odd turn of events for a woman who had
been a socialist in her youth.
Though votes for women was probably assured without
the war, it was the war that persuaded any lingering
doubters that there was no justifiable reason for
denying women the vote. Kenney and her comrades
had supported the war out of a genuine sense of
patriotic duty, but there is also no doubt that they knew
their support for the war would be a tremendous help
for their cause.
Before the war was even over, the government passed
the Representation of the People Act. This gave women
over 30 the right to vote, providing they or their
husband owned some property. It is limited by modern
standards but it gave the vote to two thirds of British
women, which was a start that was much more
promising than most suffragettes had originally hoped
for. In any case, all men and women over the age of 21,
regardless of property ownership, were given the right
to vote in 1928.
Kenney effectively retired from public life after the war,
marrying James Taylor in 1920 and giving birth to their
son, Warwick, in 1921. The family settled in
Hertfordshire, where Kenney wrote her memoirs,
Memories of a Militant, in 1924. She continued to write
to Christabel Pankhurst and agreed to occasional
interviews during her retirement, but her campaigning
days were behind her.
Annie Kenney died on 9th July 1953, at the age of 73,
after a gradual decline in her health. James Taylor was
certain that the hunger strikes had contributed to her
death. Annie Kenney is not as well known as the
Pankhursts or some other suffragette figures, perhaps
because she was a working-class girl working in an
organisation dominated by women from respectable
middle-class families. Yet her work was every bit as
important as that of her more famous comrades. A
plaque in her honour was unveiled in 1999 at the mill
she used to work at, and in 2018 a statue in her honour
was unveiled in Oldham, Greater Manchester.
INSIDE HISTORY 33

FIGHTING TO VOTE
If There Is A Will,
There Is A Way
THE DEFIANT
DISABLED
SUFFRAGETTE
Defiance is often associated with the Suffragette movement. However, as
Olivia Smith explains, there was one in particular who stood out from the
others. Confined to a wheelchair, Rosa May Billinghurst, would never let
her disability prevent her from joining the cause.
“If women don’t count, neither shall they be
counted”. Calls for a boycott from the Suffragettes
the night before the 1911 census, which resulted in
a demonstration in Parliament Square. In the midst
of this demonstration of stone throwing, street lamp
breaking and an attempt to get into the House of
Parliament , one suffragette was doing all she could
to defy the authorities. Carefully placing crutches on
the sides of her tricycle, “again and again drove her
hand-tricycle” at the police. Hanging on the back of
her tricycle, in the Suffragette green, white and
purple, was a banner reading ‘Votes for Women’.
Arrested for these actions, and sent for five days
imprisonment, this didn’t come close to stopping
her. This is Rosa May Billinghurst, the defiant
disabled Suffragette.
Rosa ‘May’ Billinghurst (although she preferred to be
called May), was a London girl through and through
being born in Lewisham in 1875. As a child Rosa
contracted polio, which subsequently left her unable
to walk, unless when wearing leg-irons, using
crutches or wheeling around on her modified
tricycle. This left her branded ‘the cripple suffragette’
by the press and peers. Rosa was fortunate to come
from a middle class family that provided her with a
governess, as her disability limited her opportunities
to attend school or university.
34 INSIDE HISTORY

The drive behind Rosa’s fight was the innate belief that
working class women deserved the vote. In her early
adult years, Rosa worked with the poor at Greenwich
Workhouse, teaching at a Sunday School. This ignited
Rosa into thinking that women’s inferior position in
society was impeding its progress, so if women had the
vote, they would use it to end poverty.
Originally Rosa was an active member of a Women’s
Liberal Association, and when in 1903 the Women’s
Social and Political Union (WSPU) was formed, Rosa
eventually joined the WSPU in 1907. As early as 1910,
she founded the Greenwich Branch of the WSPU.
From the off Rosa was an active member and didn’t let
her disability hold her back from the fun. In 1908 she
took part in the march to Albert Hall. It is said that
13,000 Suffragettes and Suffragists were led in
procession by Millicent Fawcett from Embankment to
the Royal Albert Hall. The women were carrying
decorative banners, colourful works of art, bearing the
names of campaigners, famous female figures and most
importantly showcasing their achievements. In July, she
worked for the WPSU at the Haggerston by-election.
This included teaching local children suffragist songs.
Notably, the by election was on the same day, 24
suffragettes were released from Holloway Prison. A
timely event, as they began canvassing to ‘keep the
Liberal out’. This certainly was one of the more peaceful
protests performed by the Suffragettes, but the tides
soon changed.
It was in 1909 that this rebellious suffragettes behaviour
started to trickle in. Someone had observed two
suffragettes -one in a wheelchair- who were tormenting
police as one woman distracted an officer on a horse
and then another tipped the officer off the horse. If this
were Rosa, then we can say this was the first of her
encounters with the police. In 1910 Rosa took part in
the suffragette demonstration which became
known as Black Friday. It was named Black Friday
because of the violent treatment of women by
police. The suffragettes were outside government
buildings demanding to speak with Liberal Minister
H. Asquith, when he refused they tried to storm the
building. This is when the police got involved. Rosa
found herself thrown out of her tricycle and arrested.
In an account presented to the Parliamentary
Conciliation Committee for Women’s Suffrage, Rosa
recalled the events:
“At first, the police threw me out of the machine onto
the ground in a very brutal manner. Secondly, when
on the machine again, they tried to push me along
with my arms twisted behind me in a very painful
position, with one of my fingers bent right back,
which caused me great agony. Thirdly, they took me
down a side road and left me in the middle of a
hooligan crowd, first taking all the valves out of the
wheels and pocketing them, so that I could not
move the machine, and left me to the crowd of
roughs, who, luckily, proved my friends.”
Despite this trauma, Rosa knew the publicity obtained
from the event was worth every second for the
suffragette cause. Her first series of arrests came in
1911, when she rammed her crutches and tricycle into
the police at a demonstration in parliament square. For
some reason this arrest did not make it into the Home
Office’s index of suffragettes arrested. So, Rosa’s first
official arrest was made in 1912. Between 1910 and
1912 Parliament considered various bills to give some
women the vote, but ultimately none of them passed. In
"They took me
down a side road
and left me in the
middle of a
hooligan crowd,
first taking all the
valves out of the
wheels and
pocketing them, so
that I could not
move the machine,
and left me to the
crowd of roughs,
who, luckily,
proved my
friends.”
response, the WSPU organised a window smashing
campaign in March 1912, leading to 220 arrests. Rosa
apparently hid bricks under a blanket in her tricycle. As
a result of smashing a window on Henrietta Street,
rather ironically this disabled suffragette was sentenced
to ‘one month’s hard labour’ in Holloway Prison. The
prison authorities didn’t give her any labour. Alice Ker,
another suffragette in prison with Rosa recounted in a
letter to her daughter: “Miss Billinghurst is here with her
tricycle, she has irons on each leg, and can only walk
with crutches, her tricycle works with handles. She
drives it round the yard at exercise time”.
You would think that after a month in prison this would
tame Rosa, how wrong we all are. A mere seven months
later, Rosa was arrested again. This time for an eight
month sentencing. Using her conveniently covered
tricycle again, Rosa placed bottles of black sticky
substance under a blanket, to pour in London pillar
boxes. The intention was to destroy all the post
inside. It was a widespread movement with the
government claiming over 5000 letters had been
INSIDE HISTORY 35

damaged. In mid December, Rosa and another
suffragette were spotted by a bystander who saw them
pouring the black sticky content into a box. In a
response to this sentencing, Rosa went on hunger
strike. It was her treatment when force fed that led to
Rosa’s early release two weeks later. It was said the
people that force-fed her ripped her nostril and broke a
tooth. This was reported in newspapers and after
appeals, Rosa was released and had been given a
Hunger Strike Medal 'Valour'.
Yet again, this treatment did not deter her. 1913 proved
to be another defining year in the fight for women’s
rights. Rosa’s first action in raising awareness was
chaining herself to the gates of Buckingham Palace. It
was here The Suffragette reported that police had
attacked Rosa yet again. It comes to no surprise they
went for her weakness, by tipping her out of her
.
and assisting Christabel Pankhurst’s election campaign
in Smethwick in 1918. 1918 not only brought the end of
the First World War, but it saw the British government
introduce the Representation of the Peoples Act (1918)
which gave the vote to women over 30 - yet this was
defined to women who owned property with a value
greater than £5. It was at this moment Rosa retired
from the militant suffragette campaigning.
She attended Mrs. Pankhurst's funeral and the unveiling
of her statue, located just behind the House of
Commons, in 1930. In 1939 she moved to Weybridge,
Surrey where she lived until her death on September
4th, 1953. A suffragette colleague, Lilian Lenton wrote
an obituary containing the following thought: “Despite
A procession of Suffragettes, dressed in white and bearing wreaths and a banner reading "Fight on and God will give the victory"
during the funeral proccesion of Emily Davison in Morpeth, Northumberland, 13 June 1913. Crowds line the street to watch.
© Crown Copyright: IWM
tricycle. With one report even stating they had
destroyed her tricycle. Despite this event, Rosa took
part in a suffragette demonstration which was a result
of a dark moment in the fight for women’s right to vote.
All 6000 suffragettes were dressed in white, as Rosa
wheeled herself in the procession of Emily Wilding
Davison’s memorial service. On the 4th of June, Emily
Wilding Davison stepped in front of King George V’s
horse at the Epsom Derby, passing away four days later.
In 1914 Emmeline Pankhurst decided for the
suffragettes they would prioritise their efforts to
the war over the campaign for women’s rights. Rosa
supported this, although she was still active in joining
the Women’s Freedom League, the Suffragette
Fellowship, supporting Jill Cragie’s Equal Pay Film Fund
.
her frustrating affliction I have known her always as full
of life and courage, not to mention jollity, not bitter as
she might have been, sustained, I think, by her belief in
reincarnation. She thought of this life as but one of
many. She hoped for and expected better luck next
time, and this, I trust, will be hers.”
Olivia Smith is a public historian working
across a number of different medias
including, T.V, Podcasting and was also
previously an intern with the CWGC
(Commonwealth War Graves Commission).
Twitter: @OliviaSmithHist
36 INSIDE HISTORY

FIGHTING TO VOTE
Photo: Rokeby Venus, c. 1647–51. 122 × 177 cm (48in × 49.7in). National Gallery, London.
38 INSIDE HISTORY

A
PORTRAIT
OF
PROTEST
THE SUFFRAGETTES WHO SMASHED
PAINTINGS
HELEN ANTROBUS
22 INSIDE HISTORY

"I know you will sentence me, but it will not make much
difference…I am really a happy and grateful woman
because I have been able to live in a century in which Mrs
Pankhurst was, and in some slight measure I have tried to
carry out what I believe in. It matters not what becomes of
me in the future."
Mary Richardson, Manchester Courier and Lancashire
General Advertiser – Friday 13 March 1914
In October 1903, at a table in an
unassuming parlour in the house of a
middle-class widow from Manchester,
the Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU) was formed. ‘How long you
women have been trying for the vote,’
Christabel Pankhurst had said to her
mother Emmeline, ‘For my part, I mean to
get it.’ Christabel, along with Oldham
suffragette Annie Kenney, instigated the
first act of disruption in 1905 at the Free
Trade Hall in Manchester, thus launching
a militant campaign that would send a
battle cry across the nation, for women
to rise up, and fight back. The eyes of
Britain homed in on the movements of
Emmeline Pankhurst, the general at the
helm of the army, but as her recurring
arrests repeatedly made headlines, the
women who acted in her name were too
great in number to be suppressed.
It is little wonder that the militancy of the
WSPU did, and indeed, has continued to,
captivate audiences and take a place in
public memory. The violence employed
by the WSPU, alongside the almost
mythologised status of leader Emmeline
Pankhurst, was at the heart of the 2015
film Suffragette, and for the most part,
the 2018 centenary celebrations marking
100 years since the Representation of
the People Act was passed, and some
women were finally afforded the vote.
Acts of arson and bombings escalated
between 1912 and 1914; prior to this,
attacks on government ministers and
acts of disruption were much more
common. The more the government
resisted giving women the vote, and the
more hopes were lifted then dejected by
the cycle of Conciliation and Franchise
Bills that were brought into Westminster
before being voted down, the harder the
WSPU intensified their actions. Growing
in scale and impact, arson attacks were
directed towards public spaces such as
the refreshment pavilion at Kew
Gardens, which was burned to the
ground in February 1913, at the hands of
Olive Wharry and Lilian Lenton (perhaps
the slipperiest and most evasive
suffragette known to the police). Later in
1913, Kitty Marion’s explosive work in
Liverpool left £30,000 worth of damage
at Seafield House. The bomb she had left
in Sefton Park’s palm house did not
detonate, but a similar attack in
Manchester’s Alexandra Park reduced
the glass house there to rubble.
It is easy to imagine why public spaces
like the elegant pavilions and glass
houses attracted the WSPU. Whilst
interrupting public meetings and
attacking individuals had proven
affective, the window smashing
campaign of 1912 had provided them
with an allegory that held more agency,
and prompted more genuine public fear,
than their previous campaigns. The idea
that broken windows should be more
defended than the rights of women
resonated far beyond the targeted area
of London’s West End. Destruction of
property – whilst easily reversable in
many instances – was a
physical representation of the suffering
that women were consistently put
through, a symbol of their constant
political struggle – the bills thrown out of
parliament – something built up only to
be destroyed. In this war, there were
casualties, and for once the casualties
were on the opposing side, and not
simply with the force-fed or hunger
striking suffragettes imprisoned over
enemy lines.
As a curator who has worked in
museums and historic houses for most
of my career, the attacks on public
cultural spaces and paintings are
something of interest to me. Today,
museums and galleries embrace the
different functions and contexts it holds
for different audience members and
seeks to converse more openly and
create a back and forth with its visitors
and communities around it. In 1913,
however, the role of public spaces, like
the glass house at Sefton Park, and
indeed as we will soon arrive at,
Manchester Art Gallery, functioned in an
entirely different way. Whilst public
gardens and parks had changed how
working and middle-class people were
able to spend their leisure time and (in
urban areas) enjoy green space,
museums and galleries drew in less
diverse audiences in comparison to
outdoor spaces. Still, as public art
became more accessible, it too became
a target for the WSPU.
There are some considerations to make
here on the public spaces – and more
significantly, cultural property - that the
WSPU would target in their campaigns
of retaliation and destruction. Some
paintings, like the infamous Rokeby
Venus, were bought by public funds and
donations are therefore
representations of public property, just
as much as the glass houses of
Liverpool and Manchester were, and so
the very real fear of attacking precious
paintings on display in public galleries
caused great concern.
After the bombing of the Kew Gardens
Pavilion, other cultural spots, such as
the State Apartments at Windsor,
closed entirely or put in extra measures
to prevent attacks, causing more
disruption by creating more economic
losses. Certain objects – such as muffs,
40 INSIDE HISTORY

"I broke the
glass of the
pictures as a
protest against
the wicked
sentence passed
upon Mrs
Pankhurst."
sticks and umbrellas – were banned
from public museums and galleries,
whilst plain-clothes detectives trailed
after any suspicious-looking woman who
might enter. By 1914, planned closures
at times of heightened suffrage activity
took place, causing further disturbance
for disgruntled visitors and agitated
gallery staff.
Unlike the window smashing campaign,
smashing paintings was not a formulated
moment involving hundreds of women at
one time. The most famous attacks on
paintings were isolated incidents,
undertaken by individuals or a very small
group, and the choice of painting was
often selected because of their subject;
Mary Wood deliberately chose to slash
the portrait of Henry James by Sargent at
the Royal Academy in 1914, because she
knew (and given women were still not
admitted to the RA): ‘…if a woman had
painted it, it would not have been worth
so much.’
But as we look to the national museums
to understand how these campaigns
impacted public space, closures, and
visitor restrictions, we must recognise
where the first painting smashing took
place in 1913 - in the city where
Pankhurst had, ten years previously,
founded the militant campaign.
On the evening of Thursday 3rd April
1913, at around quarter to nine, three
women stood in room No.5 of
Manchester Art Gallery. According to the
statement of the guard, he heard a loud
smashing noise, rushing in to find the
women holding ‘a small confectionary
hammer and another instrument’. The
other instrument proved to be a screw
wrench hidden behind a statue. The
hammers bore notes featuring messages
that read: ‘Votes for Women’, ‘stop
forcible-feeding’ and ‘Parliament for
dishonourable men; imprisonment for
honourable women.’
Throughout the Gallery, thirteen
paintings were smashed, causing over
£100 worth of damage. Lillian Forrester,
Annie Briggs and Evelyn Manesta were all
arrested; upon her detainment, Forrester
and Manesta declared, as if rehearsed: ‘I
broke the glass of the pictures as a
protest against the wicked sentence
passed upon Mrs Pankhurst.’ Annie
Briggs remained silent.
The attack on Manchester Art Gallery had
been planned by Lillian Forrester, but
across the city, and indeed, across the
nation, women were protesting the
sentencing of Emmeline Pankhurst, who
had been arrested for inciting the
bombing of David Lloyd-George’s halfbuilt
country house. In a rousing
speech in court, and recorded in her
autobiography My Own Story,
Pankhurst declared that militant
action would only come to an end when
the vote was won, saying: ‘We are
women, rightly or wrongly, convinced
that this is the only way in which we can
win power to alter what for us are
intolerable conditions, absolutely
intolerable….[T]here is only one way to
put a stop to this agitation; there is only
one way to break down this agitation. It
is not by deporting us, it is not by
locking us up in gaol; it is by doing us
justice.’ Women in the courtroom sang
out for their leader, whilst others, like
Forrester, planned their retribution.
Perhaps the most famous attack on
public art came from Mary Richardson,
who after Emmeline Pankhurst’s arrest
in 1914, calmly walked into the National
Gallery and slashed Velázquez’s Rokeby
Venus with a meat cleaver. In a zealous
statement, Richardson claimed:
‘I have tried to destroy the picture of the
most beautiful woman in mythological
history as a protest against the
Government for destroying Mrs
Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful
character in modern history… if there is
Lillian Forrester wearing a fresh rose. Taken at Eagle
House in Batheaston (Public Domain)
INSIDE HISTORY 41

sticks and umbrellas – were banned
from public museums and galleries,
whilst plain clothes detectives trailed
after any suspicious-looking woman who
might enter. By 1914, planned closures
at times of heightened suffrage activity
took place, causing further disturbance
for disgruntled visitors and agitated
gallery staff.
Unlike the window smashing campaign,
smashing paintings was not a formulated
moment involving hundreds of women at
one time. The most famous attacks on
paintings were isolated incidents,
undertaken by individuals or a very small
group, and the choice of painting was
often selected because of their subject;
Mary Wood deliberately chose to slash
the portrait of Henry James by Sargent at
the Royal Academy in 1914, because she
knew (and given women were still not
admitted to the RA): ‘…if a woman had
painted it, it would not have been worth
so much.’
But as we look to the national museums
to understand how these campaigns
impacted public space, closures, and
visitor restrictions, we must recognise
where the first painting smashing took
place in 1913 - in the city where
Pankhurst had, ten years previously,
founded the militant campaign.
women holding ‘a small confectionary
hammer and another instrument’. The
other instrument proved to be a screw
wrench hidden behind a statue. The
hammers bore notes featuring messages
that read: ‘Votes for Women’ ‘stop
forcible-feeding’ and ‘Parliament for
dishonourable men; imprisonment for
honourable women.’
Throughout the Gallery, thirteen
paintings were smashed, causing over
£100 worth of damage. Lillian Forrester,
Annie Briggs and Evelyn Manesta were all
arrested; upon her detainment, Forrester
and Manesta declared, as if rehearsed: ‘I
broke the glass of the pictures as a
protest against the wicked sentence
passed upon Mrs Pankhurst.’ Annie
Briggs remained silent.
The attack on Manchester Art Gallery had
been planned by Lillian Forrester, but
across the city, and indeed, across the
nation, women were protesting the
sentencing of Emmeline Pankhurst, who
On the evening of Thursday 3rd April
1913, at around quarter to nine, three
women stood in room No.5 of
Manchester Art Gallery. According to the
statement of the guard, he heard a loud
smashing noise, rushing in to find the
Militant Suffragettes as secretly identified by the Criminal Record Office. (Public Domain)
42 INSIDE HISTORY

an outcry against my deed, let everyone
remember that such an outcry is
an hypocrisy so long as they allow the
destruction of Mrs Pankhurst and other
beautiful living women, and that until the
public cease to countenance human
destruction the stones cast against me
for the destruction of this picture are
each an evidence against them of artistic
as well as moral and political humbug
and hypocrisy.’
Almost fifty years later, Richardson
recalled visiting the gallery for
reconnaissance, and feeling enraged
over the men who ogled and ‘gaped’ at
the painting, only grew in her
determination to destroy it. This could
have been the incentive for another
attack in the same year, when George
Clauden’s nude Primavera was slashed
by Mary Spencer at the Royal Academy,
alongside four other paintings.
Unlike Richardson, the Manchester Art
Gallery attackers did not publicly declare
their reasoning for choosing the
paintings that they damaged. The
selection of paintings was primarily
made up of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite
works, including Astarte Syriaca by Dante
Gabriel Rossetti and Sybilla Delphica by
Edward Burne-Jones. Whilst it is more
likely that they were chosen simply for
their accessibility, the attack on The
Syrinx by Arthur Hacker, perhaps predates
Richardson’s and Wood’s attack on
the nude as an act of challenging the
male gaze. The Syrinx was the first nude
painting to be purchased by Manchester
" I have tried to
destroy the picture of
the most beautiful
woman in
mythological history
as a protest against
the Government for
destroying Mrs
Pankhurst, who is the
most beautiful
character in modern
history."
MARY RICHARDSON
Art Gallery, and shows the nymph Syrinx
transforming into a reed to escape being
raped by the god Pan. Despite the
uncomfortable subject matter, there is a
dichotomy within the painting, of a
woman both escaping male violence
whilst also being displayed fully nude for
the viewer. It is perhaps fair to assume
that Forrester and Manesta held similar
motivations Richardson and Spencer.
Richardson’s passionate statement may
be more decorated than any given in the
Manchester Art Gallery trial, but with the
exception being Annie Briggs, who was
acquitted, all the women were
sentenced to gaol. Richardson was
forcibly fed, whilst surveillance images of
Evelyn Manesta shows a warden
clamping her arm around her neck,
forcing her to face the camera. Manesta
pulls a face to the camera despite the
force, a common tactic of suffragettes
to ensure that, even if their image was
circulated to police stations (and of
course galleries and museums) they
would not be recognised.
We will never know the real reason
behind the choice of paintings. Was it,
as in Wood’s case, and to a degree
Richardson’s, about value? Or, in the
case of Manchester Art Gallery,
accessibility? Whatever the motivations,
the attack on The Syrinx, the Rokeby
Venus, and Primavera open an early
dialogue about depictions of women,
how militancy gave the suffragettes
agency to challenge these depictions,
whilst causing wide set fear amongst
national and city museums and
galleries. Today, as museums and
galleries use their space to challenge
neutrality, encourage opinion, and
foster change, it is vital to remember
those early radical acts within the
gallery space, and the part those
courageous women played in placing
public pressure on those with the
power to grant universal suffrage.
Helen Antrobus is the coauthor
of First to the Fight:
20 Women Who Made
Manchester which is
available from our
bookshop
INSIDE HISTORY 43

BILLIE HOLIDAY
& THE IMPACT OF
STRANGE FRUIT
Images: William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress.
44 INSIDE HISTORY

Holiday doesn’t sing songs,
she transforms them.
William Dufty (co-author)
Lady Sings the Blues
Abel Meeropol had never witnessed
a lynching before. Like many in New
York City during the 1930’s, the
barbarous horror occurring in the
southern states of the USA arrived
to him in the form of a photograph
featured in a magazine. It would be
an image that would stay with him
forever. In 1971 he would later say:
“I hate lynching, and I hate injustice,
and I hate the people who
perpetuate it.”
His day job would be as a teacher
yet he would also write poetry. One
of his poems was published in a
Teacher’s Union magazine. His
poetry spoke about Southern trees
bearing the strange fruit as African
American swayed in the breeze. He
called his poem “Bitter Fruit.”
Meeropol might not have known it
at the time, but soon his poem
would go on to become a song sung
by Billie Holiday that was later
named the song of the century by
Time magazine. That song is
“Strange Fruit”.
Holiday was not the first to have
sang Strange Fruit. Setting his
poetry to music, the song would be
performed by Laura Duncan.
Robert Gordon was in attendance
as Duncan brought Meeropol’s
lyrics to life. He knew exactly who
the song would be perfect for. Soon
the teacher from New York would
play his song for Billie Holiday.
“Holiday doesn’t sing songs”,
William Dufty once said, “she
transforms them.” Holiday wanted
people not only to remember the
song but also take in every word. It
was for this reason that certain
conditions had to be met at venues
where she performed Strange
Fruit. It would the last song on her
setlist, the lights in the venue
would be dimmed with the
exception of a spotlight on her
face, there would be silence and
there would be no bar service during
the performance of the song. Every
performance of Strange Fruit was no
longer a normal song in her set. It
was designed not only to make
people hear, but listen attentively.
Barney Josephson, the founder of
Cafe Society perhaps described it
best by saying that. “People had to
remember Strange Fruit, get their
insides burned with it.”
The power of the song created a
differing set of reactions. For some,
it brought them to tears yet to
others, it provoked walkouts and
heckling. Executives at Holiday’s
record company Columbia, didn’t
want anything to do with the song.
Undeterred, Holiday went elsewhere
taking the song to the small
independent label, Commodore
Records. Strange Fruit, despite not
being released by a major label,
would still reach number 16 in the
U.S charts in 1939.
INSIDE HISTORY 23

BILLIE HOLIDAY
It wouldn’t take long for those involved with
the song to begin facing the authorities.
There was concern that the song and the
power that it held could incite hostilities.
Strange Fruit had put Holiday and Meeropol
on the government’s radar. For Meeropol, he
was called to testify before the committee
investigating communism where he was
asked if the US Communist Party had paid
him to write the song. Club promotors hiring
Holiday would be strongly urged not to allow
Holiday to sing her now famous song. For
Holiday, the repercussions would be more
intense.
Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics, had made Holiday his Public
Enemy number one. He knew exactly how to
silence her in what would become an
obsessive and long campaign against
Holiday. Rumours about Holiday’s drug use
were circling. All Anslinger needed was the
proof. Realising that his own white agents
couldn’t infiltrate Holiday’s circle, Anslinger
sent Jimmy Fletcher, one of the FBI’s few
Black agents at the time, to follow Holiday to
gather the evidence. It worked and Holiday
was later arrested for the possession of
Narcotics in 1947. She would later face
prison despite pleading guilty and asking to
be sent to hospital. The drug possession
conviction also caused her to lose her New
York City Cabaret Card meaning that she
could not perform anywhere that sold
alcohol.
Holiday’s career would continue after her
time in prison even selling out Carnegie Hall
soon after her release but Anslinger would
continue his campaign against her until her
death in 1959 at the age of 44.
Strange Fruit may have been a song from
1939 but it continued to make its mark as
the racial tensions in America grew
throughout the 1950’s. Ahmet Ertegun, who
would later co-found Atlantic Records called
the song: “a declaration of war...the
beginning of the civil rights movement.” It
was a song that stirred emotions, highlighted
the tensions, and in attempting to silence
Holiday, proved that once a song hits the
public’s imagination so fiercely, no
government prevent its power.
Ahmet Ertegun, who would later co-found
Atlantic Records, called the song:
“a declaration of
war...the
beginning of the
civil rights
movement.”
46 INSIDE HISTORY

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
INSIDE HISTORY 47

WORDS: Ben Purdie
WHERE
WORDS
FAIL...
48 INSIDE HISTORY

As music grew in
popularity among the
politically aware youth,
so too did the way it
was used by artists to
get anti-war messages
across. During the
Vietnam War, artists
such as Bob Dylan, The
Rolling Stones,
Creedence Clearwater
Revival and The
Animals used their
popularity to spread a
message and in doing
so, a new protest
movement was
established using the
power of music.
MUSIC
SPEAKS

When the war in Vietnam began, many Americans believed
that defending South Vietnam from Communist
encroachment was vital, and the “domino theory”
introduced by President Eisenhower must be stopped, to
prevent the spread of Communism in Asia. However, as the
protracted, counter-insurgency war persisted, many
American views started to adjust, as “winning the hearts
and minds of the Vietnamese people” appeared
preposterous. With 16,899 Americans dying from the war in
1968 alone, coupled with the introduction of the draft in
December 1969, protests were becoming rife and took a
vast number of forms.
portrayed in the song. ‘I Feel Like I'm Fixin to Die Rag’,
written by Country Joe MacDonald a few years after he was
discharged from the Navy, featured the bitter lyrics "you
can be the first one on your block to have your boy come
home in a box" were played again and again at rallies and
demonstrations.The power of the protest within this music
was poignant for many reasons, but most significantly for
the impact it had on people. It encouraged people to voice
their concerns and stand up for themselves and their core
beliefs, as well as the simple fact that it gave these people a
sense of belonging and eradicated their feeling of being
alone with these issues. With household names like John
Lennon protesting the war through the medium of music, it
gathered swathes of media coverage
and made the American government
aware of the deep resentment towards
the war of their people, and put intense
pressure on them to act, or face losing
any last drops of popularity they had
remaining.
The birth of the ‘hippy culture’ was also
very influential in protesting the
Vietnam war and inspiring many
protesting tracks. Hippies saw
mainstream authority as the origin of
all societies ills and they were bitterly
opposed to the Vietnam War and the
draft introduced by the government.
Although often not linked, the Rolling
Stones’ opening track in their album Let
It Bleed, “Gimme Shelter” was a hippy
inspired song that called for peace and
for America to stop the war in Vietnam.
One key form of protest which ignited even more
discontent and passionate outrage towards the war in
Vietnam and the American government was music. Sending
thousands of young men, the average age of the American
soldier famously being 19, to a world of horror and pain
that would live with them forever, caused protest music and
cries for peace through lyrics. John Lennon; Creedence
Clearwater Revival; Bob Dylan;Springsteen and Barry
McGuire amongst countless more, all clearly demonstrated
their disillusion and outrage with the war in ‘nam and their
powerful lyrics captivated millions of people around the
globe. These icons brought the resentment of the Vietnam
War to the forefront of the media as well as people’s minds.
Creedence Clearwater Revival’s most famous track,
Fortunate Son, references rich people who orchestrate
wars and then draft the poor to fight in them within its
lyrics and has quickly became an anti-war anthem,
resonating with many people, who as a result came
together to showcase their indignation at the exploitation
of the lower classes. Over two and a half million sales of
Fortunate Son show the extent to which the American
people could relate to the meaningful and strong message
Above left: Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1968. From left to right:
Tom Fogerty, Doug Clifford, Stu Cook and John Fogerty. (Public
Domain)
Above right: John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Nationaal Archief, the
Dutch National Archives (Public Domain)
50 INSIDE HISTORY

Mick Jagger in concert 1976. Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 Unported (Nationaal Archief)
It isn’t a traditional Rolling Stones song, but it has gone on
to be one of their greatest hits, and upon its release,
protesters sang the song peacefully at rallies against the
war, which was their preferred protest method. The
background vocals were sung by Merry Clayton. Clayton
sings the haunting verses, “War, children; it’s just a shot
away; it’s just a shot away” and “Rape, murder; it’s just a
shot away; it’s just a shot away.” These lyrics, full of emotion,
show just how monumental the toll the Vietnam war was
having on Americans at the time and music was one of the
main ways they found of expressing this deep-rooted
emotion. Another major song in the anti-Vietnam War era
was “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place” by the Animals (1965).
This song was immensely popular with American GI’s and
has become an iconic piece of music, especially in its
relation to the Vietnam War. During 2006 two University of
Wisconsin-Madison employees, one being a Vietnam
veteran, began an in-depth survey of hundreds of Vietnam
veterans. They found "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" had
resonated the strongest among all the music popular then:
"War,
children;
it’s just a
shot
away; it’s
just a
shot
away”
"We had absolute
unanimity is this song
being the touchstone.
This was the Vietnam
anthem. Every bad
band that ever played
in an armed forces
club had to play this
song."
This demonstrates how the power of music helped protest
against the Vietnam War and helped the soldiers endure all
their suffering and trauma in its own way. As Hans Christian
Andersen famously said: “where words fail, music speaks”
and this is very much applicable to the Vietnam War
protests, as it allowed people to express their emotion in
such a passionate fashion to get their message across.
Protest was clearly widespread in opposition to the war
that was intended to “win the hearts and minds of the
Veitnamese people'' that, instead, resulted in
disillusionment and outrage from the people of America.
From Muhammed Alli, to John Lennon, many influential
characters protested the Vietnam war and this kindled
media attention which only led to more protest. When the
fall of Saigon arrived on 30th April 1975, the war was
effectively over, but the suffering and trauma would go on
to affect the nation and its people for far, far longer. In total
around 60,000 American soldiers were killed in the war,
30% of them being draftees, but the mental trauma and
guilt of the survivors would never disappear. The power of
protest during the Vietnam War was rather unlike anything
seen before, especially in the fact that it gave birth to a
whole new culture of ‘hippies’ and a generation of music
and arts.
50 INSIDE HISTORY
INSIDE HISTORY 51

PROTEST &
SPORT
52 INSIDE HISTORY

SHUT UP AND
DRIBBLE?
By Rachel Lee Perez
Images: Nationaal Archief, Flickr, Creative Commons
It was October 16, 1968. Two American
athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos,
had just won gold and bronze medals in
the 200-meter sprint at the Summer
Olympics in Mexico City. Both athletes,
with black gloves on their hands, lifted
their fists up into the air as the United
States National Anthem played over the
grand speakers. This act of protest on
behalf of human rights would lead to the
expulsion of both athletes involved. This
demonstration would become but one in
a series of demonstrations by athletes
throughout the ages to bring awareness
to racial and social injustice.
The Summer Olympics of 1968 took place
only months after the assassination of civil
rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In
addition to heightened racial tension,
there were also regular protests
throughout the United States stemming
from differing opinions in regard to the
Vietnam War.
Leading up to the Olympics, Smith and
Carlos became part of an organization
called the Olympic Project for Human
Rights (OPHR) which protested against
racial segregation in sports, calling for
equal treatment of Black athletes and the
employment of more Black coaches. At a
time when Black athletes like Jackie
Robinson were breaking through the
white barrier in professional sports, the
OPHR sought to remind Americans that
these accomplishments did not mean that
racial inequality no longer existed within
sports. Initially, the OPHR intended to
boycott the Olympics altogether but Black
athletes like Smith and Carlos chose
instead to compete in the Games and to
use their platform as a way to further
push the project’s objectives.
On October 16, 1968, Smith won the
200-meter sprint and set a world record
of 19.38 seconds. Following shortly
behind him at 20.06 seconds came
Australian athlete, Peter Norman. And
finally, in third place at 20.10 seconds
came Carlos. As the three athletes waited
to take the podium, they talked among
themselves about how they would use
their platform to bring awareness to the
human rights cause. Smith and Carlos
removed their shoes to represent Black
poverty, wore beads around their necks
to represent lynching, and donned a
black glove on one hand to represent
their solidarity with oppressed Black
people around the world. The men had
each initially planned to wear black
gloves on both hands but Carlos realized
before taking the podium that he had left
his pair back at the Olympic Village.
Norman, the white Australian athlete that
had taken second place, suggested that
Carlos wear one of Smith’s gloves. This is
why, when you see the iconic picture of
Smith and Carlos with their gloved fists in
the air, Smith is seen raising his right
hand and Carlos is seen raising his left.
Although Norman did not raise his fist
along with his fellow athletes, he did don
a badge for the OPHR. Similar to the
United States, Australia was also in the
midst of their own awakening regarding
racial discrimination. With policies
beginning in 1901 and some running all
the way through 1973, Australia was
under the legislation of White Australia
Policy which essentially halted all non-
European immigration into the country
and further limited the rights of nonwhite
people. In demonstration of his
protest of racism within his own country,
Norman stood in solidarity with his fellow
athletes.
When they took the podium and the
Star Spangled Banner began, the
American athletes turned toward the
United States flag, bowed their heads,
and lifted their gloved fists. This image
would go down in History and would
become one of the most iconic and
most influential incidents in sports
History. In response to this
demonstration, the audience booed
and hissed.
The men were rushed from the
stadium with Olympic officials hot on
their heels. Shortly after what Olympic
officials deemed to be too much of a
political statement for a setting that is
generally intended to be apolitical, the
President of the International Olympic
Committee, Avery Brundage, ordered
for the suspension of Smith and Carlos.
Interestingly, Brundage had served as
the President of the United States (US)
Olympic Committee during the 1936
Games and had not raised objections
to the Nazi salutes used there. While
the US Olympic Committee ignored the
demands of suspension, they did
eventually expel both Smith and Carlos
from the Games.
When Smith and Carlos returned to the
United States, they faced backlash and
even death threats. But while Smith
and Carlos would eventually return to
sports, both playing for the National
Football League (NFL) and Carlos even
eventually working with the 1984
Summer Olympics Organizing
Committee, Australian Silver Medalist
Peter Norman would not have a similar
fate. For his part in the demonstration,
Norman was nearly entirely ostracized
from the sporting community. He was
vilified in the media and was rejected
INSIDE HISTORY 53

PROTEST & SPORT
from the 1972 Summer Olympics despite qualifying
numerous times. Even when the Summer Olympics were
hosted in Sydney, Australia in 2000, Norman was not
invited to participate.
The 1968 Summer Olympics demonstration served as only
one of many efforts in the professional sporting arena to
illuminate human rights and inequality. Only a year prior to
this iconic event, the world of sports was shaken up by yet
another iconic event.
On April 28, 1967, world-renowned boxing champion
Muhammad Ali refused to join the U.S. Army in America’s
war against Vietnam. The eventual three-time world
champion and former Olympic gold medalist would be
convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years in
prison, fined $10,000, and banned from boxing for three
years for his refusal to serve in the military. In the words of
Ali, he said:
“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or
some darker people, or some poor hungry people in
the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them
for what?...They never lynched me, they didn’t put
no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality,
rape and kill my mother and father. Shoot them for
what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take
me to jail."
Ali would return to boxing a few years later and would
prove that he was still the best heavyweight boxer in the
world. Other athletes that made similar political
statements would not achieve similar fates.
Muhammad Ali, 1966. Image from the Nationaal Archief, the Dutch
National Archives. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
Netherlands
In August of 2016, former quarterback for the San
Francisco 49ers Colin Kaepernick was caught on camera
sitting during the National Anthem. In response to this
image going viral online and on television, Kaepernick
stated:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag or
a country that oppresses Black people and people of
color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would
be selfish on my part to look the other way.”
Later that year and into the next, Kaepernick - along with
other teammates - continued to kneel during the National
Anthem as a peaceful, silent protest against racial
inequality. This would systematically lead to Kaepernick’s
removal from the game. In a statement made by the NFL’s
former Vice President of Communications, Joe Lockhart, he
said Kaepernick was “bad for business”. No team would
sign Kaerpernick, many of them fearing a significant
decrease in ticket sales by their more conservative fans. In
a continuation of Lockhart’s statements regarding
Kaepernick, he said, “As bad of an image problem it
presented for the league and the game, no owner was
willing to put the business at risk over this issue.” By March
Flickr: Colin Kaepernick, (Mike Morbeck)
54 INSIDE HISTORY

“Keep the political
comments to
yourselves. Shut up
and dribble.”
Fox News host
Laura Ingraham
2017, Kaepernick was a free agent and would never again
play on a professional football field.
We see the same themes continued in more recent years.
Following the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd, an
unarmed Black man, the National Basketball Association
(NBA) - in particular - took a stand of solidarity against
racial discrimination and inequality. Professional athletes
boycotted games and the NBA eventually postponed all
three of its playoff games on August 26, 2020, leading
other professional sports leagues, like Major League
Baseball and Major League Soccer, to call off their own
games. Similar to Kaepernick in years prior, many NBA
athletes continue to kneel during the National Anthem on
a court. that now displays the words “Black Lives Matter”
across it.
Just as Americans responded in 1967 when Muhammad Ali
refused to be drafted into the U.S. Army, just as Americans
responded in 1968 when Tommie Smith and John Carlos
raised their fists in the air at the Olympic Games, and just
as Americans responded in 2016 when Colin Kaepernick
knelt on the football field, many Americans responded
negatively to the 2020 demonstrations of U.S. athletes.
One of the most jarring responses came from Fox News
host Laura Ingraham when she responded to NBA
superstar Lebron James speaking out against racial
disparity by saying, “Keep the political comments to
yourselves. Shut up and dribble.” James responded:
“The best thing she did was help me create more
awareness. I get to sit up here and talk about social
injustice. We will definitely not shut up and dribble. I
mean too much to society, too much to the youth,
too much to so many kids who feel like they don’t
have a way out.”
Athletes have used their platform to create awareness for
racial and social injustice since the beginning of time. The
events of 1967 were not the first; and the events of 2020
will certainly not be the last.
LeBron James with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018 (All-Pro Reels)
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
Rachel Lee Perez is a two-time published
author, paralegal, ballet instructor, content
editor, and podcaster. As co-host of the
Hashtag History podcast, she releases weekly
episodes about History’s greatest stories of
controversy, conspiracy, and corruption.
Hashtag History can be found on all major
podcast platforms and on their website here:
www.hashtaghistory-pod.com.
INSIDE HISTORY 55

Demonstrators marching in the street holding signs during the March on Washington, 1963.
56 INSIDE HISTORY

THE MARCH
ON
WASHINGTON
Words: Hannah Pringle
Images: Colourised by Jordan J Lloyd (Unseen Histories/ColorGraph/Unsplash)
The March on Washington took place on
28 August 1963 and witnessed around
250,000 people gather at the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington DC. The march
was a part of a much bigger civil rights
movement that was gaining momentum in
the 1950s. It was a direct result of the
discrimination facing black Americans. The
march marked a century since President
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation,
which announced how “all persons held as
slaves…are, and henceforward shall be
free”. This idea of freedom is how we find
a connection between these two events.
Although people were no longer confined
to the borders of a property, they
remained trapped within American
society. The southern states replaced
slavery with segregation and the Jim Crow
laws caused irreparable damage.
The Jim Crow laws were implemented
shortly after the Emancipation
Proclamation and stated how facilities and
services must be “separate but equal”.
These laws were challenge in the case of
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka,
1954. This ruling can be considered
a precedent for the March on Washington.
In abidance with the Jim Crow laws, Linda
Brown was required to attend a school for
‘colored’ children. This school not only
required her to travel for miles each day,
but also lacked the standard displayed by
the school for white children within her
neighbourhood. Twelve other families
came forward to file a class action
suit. The Supreme Court ruled in Brown’s
favour and deemed school segregation
unconstitutional.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott is another
great example to consider when
analysing the lead up to the March on
Washington. It was inspired by the arrest
of Rosa Parks, National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People
secretary, in 1955. Parks took a seat in
the designated ‘colored’ section of the
bus and was told to move alongside
others, to accommodate a white
individual. Parks refused to give up her
seat and was arrested by two police
officers. This event highlights how the Jim
Crow laws were interpreted and
exploited throughout America, and how
individuals such as Parks were standing
up for what little rights, Jim Crow allowed.
Rosa Parks stood trial on Monday 5
December 1955. When the trial took
place, Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther
King Jr. showed their support by
managing the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
They fought to topple the system of Jim
Crow and established the Montgomery
Improvement Association. The Supreme
Court ruled in Parks’ favour and
deemed bus segregation
unconstitutional.
A key figure in the march was Asa Philip
Randolph, President of the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters. Prior to 1963, he
organised a march which can be viewed
as a rehearsal for the March on
Washington. This march took place in
1957 and witnessed 25,000 people
accumulate at the Lincoln Memorial, to
recognise Brown vs. Board of Education.
He wanted to ensure that the rule,
alongside the civil rights movement,
remained at the forefront of people’s
minds – but how did 25,000 people
become 250,000 people six years later?
Rosa Parks at the "Poor Peoples March at Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial 1968, [Washington, D.C.]
INSIDE HISTORY 57

“Let us not
seek to
satisfy our
thirst for
freedom by
drinking
from the cup
of bitterness
and hatred.”
Martin Luther
King Jr
Martin Luther King press conference / [MST]." Original black and white negative by Marion S. Trikosko. Taken August 26th, 1964
58 INSIDE HISTORY

CIVIL RIGHTS
The conflicting attitudes hit a pinnacle with the Birmingham
campaign and riots of 1963. The Southern Christian
Leadership Conference organised a peaceful campaign to
challenge the racial divide within the city and it resulted in
an extremely violent outcome. In response to the campaign,
the Ku Klux Klan bombed the temporary residence of the
SCLC President, Martin Luther King Jr., and organisers of the
campaign.
Martin Luther King Jr. understood that for races to coexist,
equally in America, there needed to be systematic change.
Change could not be achieved in the presence of the futile
attitudes that suffocated society. There needed to be a
move towards civil rights legislation, training programs for
the unemployed, the enforcement of the 14th Amendment,
and an end to school segregation. In turn, freedom for black
Americans.
Following President John F. Kennedy’s civil rights address,
march organisers stepped into action to ensure the Civil
Rights Act would be pushed through. The March on
Washington gained an incredible amount of support and
was the largest protest to take place in American
history. The march was able to achieve so much support
due to the organisation of the Big Ten: Asa Philip Randolf,
Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, Whitney
Young, John Lewis, Walter Reuther, Eugene Carson Blake,
Mathew Ahmann and Joachim Prinz. This march was the
first to welcome both black and white supporters, to create
a powerful, inspiring image that would spark change.
Although the organisers differed in their opinions regarding
the message of the march, they stood unified in their views
on the Civil Rights Act.
A variety of speakers took the stage, including Martin Luther
King Jr., Roy Wilkins, Daisy Bates and more. King’s iconic I
have a dream speech was the last one of the day and
outlined the many worries facing black Americans, alongside
their aspirations: “I have a dream that my four little children
will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by
the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
The peaceful march was extremely significant in gaining
support for the Civil Rights Act and drawing attention to the
inequality present in American society. This peaceful
approach was not admired by all, and activists such as
Malcolm X exhibited an alternative take on the movement.
He openly mocked the march by titling it the ‘Farce on
Washington’. Malcolm X believed in a more confrontational
approach to the civil rights movement. To him, the march
symbolised order and restriction, which did not fit in to this
revolutionary way of thinking. He claimed the March on
Washington was simply “another example of how much this
country goes in for the surface glossing over”.
Despite the clear divisions within the movement, the march
achieved its objective as the Civil Rights Act was established
by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. The March on
Washington was incredibly successful, as it not only worked
to prohibit discrimination, but inspired people to consider
the racial attitudes exhibited within society. By making
people present in this fight for equality, they were able to
implement impactful change. This period of protest fuelled
the civil rights movement, and we are confronted with an
uncomfortable question: Would the March on Washington
have been successful, if it had taken place a decade earlier?
View of the huge crowd from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, during the March on Washington
INSIDE HISTORY 59

WIR SIND
DAS
VOLK!
WE
ARE
THE
PEOPLE!
Monday demonstration in Leipzig, 16 October 1989
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1990-0922-002 / Friedrich Gahlbeck / CC-BY-SA 3.0.
As the International guests and delegates drank their
champagne in the Palace of the Republic to celebrate
the 40th anniversary of the GDR, there was something
more serious stirring in the country. The voices of
reform were getting louder as the Soviet Union was
tittering on the edge. In Hungary, the government had
began to dismantle its border fence with Austria. The
first gap in the Iron Curtain had opened and with it
came a desire for more freedoms. Czechoslovakia
would soon follow. Those gaps within the curtain
would encourage many from the GDR to travel to
those regions in the hope of finally getting to the west.
Change was happening and yet in eyes of the GDR
officials, it was simply ignored. They had controlled so
much of people’s lives during their 40 years that, in
their minds, that this was simply just another political
game. Small concessions were of course being made
in an attempt to appease the restlessness but what
GDR officials miscalculated was that their numbers
had swelled.
The champagne that flowed that day within those
walls could not wash down what was really
happening. Those within the Palace might have been
We are here to claim our
right as women, not only
to be free, but to fight for
freedom. That it is our
right as well as our duty.
treated to the finer facades that comes to those in
positions of power but in reality, the GDR was
crumbling beneath them. Little did they know just
over a month later, the socialist dream that they had
concocted over their 40 years in power would soon
come tumbling down. They may have not have
60 INSIDE HISTORY

Peaceful protesters gather in Alexanderplatz, Berlin
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1989-1104-008 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
“life
punishes
those who
come too
late.”
Mikhail Gorbachev to Erich Honecker
(October 1989)
known it at the time but this was far from a
birthday celebration but more like a pre-emptive
wake.
Whilst those in the Palace of the Republic
celebrated, others were protesting. Outside the
Gethsemane Church in East Berlin, 1,500
protesters had gathered for a candlelight
demonstration. The apparatus of power dealt
with the protest in the same way that they
always had done before. Round up the
ringleaders and the others involved in order to
remind society who was in charge. It was a tactic
that worked throughout the countries existence.
Imprisonment, monitoring, surveillance and a fist
of fury were common practice for those involved
in any form of protest and the events at
Gethsemane Church were no different as police
crushed the protest arresting around 500
people.
Mikhail Gorbachev was in attendance at the 40th
anniversary celebrations. The leader of the
Soviet Union, whose Glasnost policy opened the
door for more openness and transparency
within government institutions, had urged the
GDR’s leader, Erich Honecker, to implement
reforms. Gorbachev told Honecker that “life
punishes those who come too late".
Actors Johanna Schall and Ulrich Mühe speaking at the rally.
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1989-1104-034 / CC-BY-SA
With Gorbachev’s words ringing in his ears,
Honecker decided to react. Yet, his reaction was
nothing to what Gorbachev actually meant.
Instead of implementing Glasnost as Gorbachev
was eluding to, Honecker opted to force the
status quo by ordering the head of the Stasi,
Erich Mielke, to initiate “Day X”. Day X was no
ordinary order. It had been planned in case of an
emergency and had been slowly building in its
apparatus since 1979. 23 “isolation and
INSIDE HISTORY 61

internment camps” including Ranis Castle, were prepared to
house the 85,939 individuals who were currently being
monitored by the Stasi. Under codename: “Shield”, the
arrest orders were sent to all of the 211 local Stasi
precincts. To Mielke’s dismay, they were ignored as local
Stasi operatives opted to barricade themselves within their
offices for fear of reprisals.
Prior to the 9th October, most protests within the GDR
were often of the size of that at Gethsemane Church. There
was of course a good reason for this. The fear implemented
by the SED and the Stasi had over their citizens. Calling for
civil rights was a dangerous game yet despite this, one of
the largest protests in GDR history was being prepared.
Unknown to the citizens of Leipzig at the time was just how
far their protest and courage would set in motion not just
the fall of the Berlin Wall but also of a country.
Approximately 70,000 people would gather in the streets of
Leipzig. Fear of reprisals were no doubt at the back of
everyone’s minds. The protesters in Leipzig chanted “No
violence!” in order to avoid giving the authorities an excuse
to attack. Whilst the national GDR media mentioned little
about the events in Leipzig, the protestors knew that the
story would be big news in the West. Undercover footage
and interviews soon found their way on Western news
channels.
The events in Leipzig had turned the tables. Now they faced
the Stasi offices with defiance as the shadow men cowered
behind their desks. It also probably explains why the local
Stasi authorities did little when instructed to initiate “Day X”.
The countries so called “Sword and Shield” were now
looking blunt and damaged.
Protests continued throughout the country. In order to
appease the voice of the people, the SED forced Erich
Honecker from office. For Honecker, the words of
Gorbachev had come to fruition. However, the damage was
now done. The hope that this would change the mood
would soon be quashed as the protests continued.
In Alexanderplatz, East Berlin, on the 4th November, the
biggest demonstration against the government occurred. It
is estimated that anywhere between half a million to a
million protesters filled the area that day. Unlike like some
of the other protests, this one was permitted that place by
the authorities. Televised live on East German TV, people
from all over the GDR were able to witness for themselves
what was happening. Speeches came from all parts of the
spectrum. From actors, artists and civil rights campaigners
to members of the ruling authorities such as Markus Wolf
(former head of the East German foreign intelligence
service) and Politburo members.
The reception for the likes of Markus Wolf were particularly
uncomfortable for the authorities. Bärbel Bohley would
later say this of Markus Wolf’s time at the microphone:
“When I saw that his hands were trembling because the
people were booing I said to Jens Reich: We can go now,
Schabowski,
having not
read the
memo fully,
simply stated:
“As far as I
know...
immediately.”
now it is all over. The revolution is irreversible."
The revolution may have started yet no one foresaw what
would happen next.
One of the Poltiburo speakers in the 4th November was
Günter Schabowski. Like Markus Wolf, he had received a frosty
reception complete with boos and jeers. Just five days after the
Alexanderplatz demonstration it would be Schabowski’s press
conference that would lead to the fall of the Berlin wall.
The cabinet had passed a decree on travel regulations allowing
for more freedom. Schabowski was meant to announce it at
the conference in full but didn’t completely read the memo.
There was meant to be an embargo until the next day at 4am
when the radio announcers were supposed to read out the
decree to the nation. After reading out the decree live on
television, Schabowski was asked:
“When will that happen?”
Schabowski, having not read the memo fully, simply stated: “As
far as I know...immediately.”
Recalling the event, Schabowski later said that “Hundreds,
thousands of people flocked to the boarded checkpoints,
where they were blocked by the guards, who didn’t know any
of this". Overwhelmed, the guards desperate for any official
orders, opened the barriers and let the people though.
The GDR, only one month after celebrating its 40th birthday,
had fallen without the firing of a gun but instead, a peaceful
revolution despite the desperate attempts of Honecker and
Mielke to hold onto power. Instead of Day X, there was a new
dawn in Germany.
62 INSIDE HISTORY

Photo: Sue Ream, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

sticks and umbrellas – were banned
from public museums and galleries,
whilst plain clothes detectives trailed
after any suspicious-looking woman who
might enter. By 1914, planned closures
at times of heightened suffrage activity
took place, causing further disturbance
for disgruntled visitors and agitated
gallery staff.
Unlike the window smashing campaign,
smashing paintings was not a formulated
moment involving hundreds of women at
one time. The most famous attacks on
paintings were isolated incidents,
undertaken by individuals or a very small
group, and the choice of painting was
often selected because of their subject;
Mary Wood deliberately chose to slash
the portrait of Henry James by Sargent at
the Royal Academy in 1914, because she
knew (and given women were still not
admitted to the RA): ‘…if a woman had
painted it, it would not have been worth
so much.’
But as we look to the national museums
to understand how these campaigns
impacted public space, closures, and
visitor restrictions, we must recognise
where the first painting smashing took
place in 1913 - in the city where
Pankhurst had, ten years previously,
founded the militant campaign.
women holding ‘a small confectionary
hammer and another instrument’. The
other instrument proved to be a screw
wrench hidden behind a statue. The
hammers bore notes featuring messages
that read: ‘Votes for Women’ ‘stop
forcible-feeding’ and ‘Parliament for
dishonourable men; imprisonment for
honourable women.’
Throughout the Gallery, thirteen
paintings were smashed, causing over
£100 worth of damage. Lillian Forrester,
Annie Briggs and Evelyn Manesta were all
arrested; upon her detainment, Forrester
and Manesta declared, as if rehearsed: ‘I
broke the glass of the pictures as a
protest against the wicked sentence
passed upon Mrs Pankhurst.’ Annie
Briggs remained silent.
The attack on Manchester Art Gallery had
been planned by Lillian Forrester, but
across the city, and indeed, across the
nation, women were protesting the
sentencing of Emmeline Pankhurst, who
On the evening of Thursday 3rd April
1913, at around quarter to nine, three
women stood in room No.5 of
Manchester Art Gallery. According to the
statement of the guard, he heard a loud
smashing noise, rushing in to find the