The suffragette war on the British working class

The suffragette movement did not care for working-class men and women and carried out vicious attacks on them

The suffragettes are unique among British political groups of the twentieth century in that over a hundred years later, we still take them at their own estimation. In other words, we accept without question what they said about themselves at the time and treat their propaganda today as being objectively true. This is very strange, because it means that we accord them a respect, even veneration, which is not granted to any other past political party or faction. The peculiar regard in which the suffragettes, the militant members of the Women’s Social and Political Union, are held has tended to stifle criticism and discourage close examination of what they actually stood for. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in that most famous of suffragette slogans, one of the most memorable and well-known catch-phrases in political history; ‘Votes for Women’.