Emmeline Pankhurst Turns Imprisonment into Protest

In October 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union in Manchester, adopting the motto deeds, not words. Having grown disillusioned with parliamentary debates that repeatedly stalled legislation for female enfranchisement, she committed the all-women organisation to direct confrontation. The group quickly abandoned the polite conventions of earlier advocacy, organising public demonstrations, disrupting political meetings, and actively challenging both police and established political parties.

The union's early militancy took non-violent forms. Members made speeches, gathered petition signatures, organised rallies, and published a newsletter called Votes for Women. The group also convened a series of Women's Parliaments, including sessions at Caxton Hall, timed to coincide with official government sittings. When a suffrage bill was talked out in the House of Commons in May 1905, Pankhurst and other members staged a loud protest outside Parliament. Police forced them away, but she regarded the episode as proof that militancy could capture public attention. All three of her daughters soon became active in the union, and in October 1905 Christabel and Annie Kenney were thrown out of a Liberal Party meeting and arrested for a technical assault on the police.