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Some suffragist female groups developed militant and violent tactics which tarnished the image of women as peaceful people that the anti-suffragists had been striving to preserve. Anti-suffragists used these acts as reasons to show that women were unable to handle political matters and that both genders had different strengths. [29]
The "suffragists" of the largest women's suffrage society, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, led by Millicent Fawcett, were anti-violence, and during the campaign NUWSS propaganda and Fawcett herself increasingly differentiated between the militants of the WSPU and their own non-violent means.
The NUWSS held a “strong disapprobation of the use of physical force and physical violence” as a means to a political end; constitutionalist accounts such as Strachey's therefore stand directly at odds with the accounts of the Militant school, and established the initial historical debate surrounding the actions of Suffragettes. [5]
The National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), also known as the suffragists (not to be confused with the suffragettes) was an organisation founded in 1897 of women's suffrage societies around the United Kingdom. [1] [2] In 1919 it was renamed the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. [citation needed]
Suffragists and suffragettes, often members of different groups and societies, used or use differing tactics. Australians called themselves "suffragists" during the nineteenth century while the term "suffragette" was adopted in the earlier twentieth century by some British groups after it was coined as a dismissive term in a newspaper article.
The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NYSAOWS) used grass roots mobilization techniques they had learned from watching the suffragists to defeat the 1915 referendum. They were very similar to the suffragists themselves, but used a counter-crusading style warning of the evils that suffrage would bring to women.
With fine weather as an ally the women suffragists were able to bring together an immense body of people. These people were not all sympathisers with the object, and much service to the cause must have been rendered by merely collecting so many people and talking over the subject with them.
On 13 October 1908, Emmeline Pankhurst together with Christabel Pankhurst and Flora Drummond organised a rush on the House of Commons. 60,000 people gathered in Parliament Square and attempts were made by suffragettes to break through the 5000 strong police cordon. Thirty-seven arrests were made, ten people were taken to hospital. [21]