I read an article the other day \u2013 I forget where \u2013 trying to argue that groups such as Just Stop Everything and Exhaustion Rebellion are the modern equivalent of the Suffragettes; that is \u201cpeople who are prepared to be pains in the neck because somebody has to [be]\u201d. \u00a0Like what faced the Suffragettes a hundred years ago, the argument went, the issues are too important to ignore.<\/p>\n
I was initially sceptical of this as it seemed to me\u00a0that the suffragettes targeted the political system and its workings rather than setting out to inconvenience (and hence alienate) ordinary members of the public, and certainly didn't\u00a0stop ambulances getting to hospitals. \u00a0However, as\u00a0I\u2019m no expert on any of this, I read around and finished up here<\/a>. \u00a0I was surprised at what I found.<\/p>\n If anything, today's militants are mild by comparison with some of the more extreme members of the Women\u2019s Social and Political Movement (WSPU). \u00a0Christabel Pankhurst wrote this in 1913:<\/p>\n \"If men use explosives and bombs for their own purpose they call it war, and the throwing of a bomb that destroys other people is then described as a glorious and heroic deed. Why should a woman not make use of the same weapons as men. It is not only war we have declared. We are fighting for a revolution!\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Physical attacks (whips, catapults and hatchets) on Churchill and Asquith, putting phosphorus into postboxes which injured postmen, trying to burn down buildings (theatres, piers, railway stations, Kew Gardens, homes, churches), sometimes with the public inside them, attacks on galleries, shops and phone wires.<\/p>\n We should, perhaps, think ourselves lucky.<\/p>\n