Description:This image marks the start of a short composition on Suffragette activity in Handsworth. Eight articles have been selected from three newspapers, the Handsworth Herald, the Birmingham Daily Mail, and the Birmingham Daily Post, from a period between March and August 1913. All these newspapers are held in Birmingham Central Library Local History Archives. Unfortunately the archive is not indexed and time constraints dictated that only a small selection of articles relating to Suffragette activity in the area could be digitised.
There were a number of women's suffrage organisations operating in 1913 as a result of splits and debates over political direction and tactics. The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) which counted Emmeline, Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst amongst its founders had been set up in 1903 as a break away from the National Union of Woman's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). The WSPU were known as 'Militant' Suffragettes because of their tactics of direct action. The Women's Freedom League (WFL) broke away from the WSPU in 1907 in a debate over the democracy of the organisation. The WFL took with it many of the working class suffragettes; this left the WSPU leadership more reliant on the support of middle and upper class women. Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst began to argue for limited suffrage to attract middle class women, and forged links with the Conservative party. By 1910 Sylvia Pankhurst had become disillusioned by the WSPU's abandonment of its socialist roots. Sylvia concentrated on campaigning for the Labour Party and set up the East London Federation of Suffragettes which was based on the collective activities of working class women. Other prominent women left the WSPU around this time as a result of it's anti democratic methods of decision-making, for example Emmeline Pankhurst cancelled the 1907 meeting where a proposal concerning democratising the organisation was to be heard.