I don't know much about them, but i've heard that for all the talk abut them they weren't actually much help for feminism or woman's rights.
any comments/info on this subject?
just interested....

The militant acts of many suggrattes, sometimes literally military-style violence, probably hindered the achievement of the cause for women's suffrage in Britain by inspiring many men and some women previously apathetic or mildly anti-women's suffrage to become accordingly militant or more extreme anti-women's suffrage activists.

There's a view that what they did in terms of violence and damage of property convinced men that women could not have power/made women seem more hysterical, but I don't know the details.

Fixating on "the vote" was a big mistake.

To be fair, the suffragettes later on (mainly those lead by Sylvia Pankhurst) did take up issues of working class enfranchment, and became linked to the Zimmerwald conference and the 3rd International (albeit critical of Lenin; he wrote "Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" as a critique of Pankhurst's politics) and was involved in the CPGB.

I know there was a distinction between the suffragettes and the suffragists but I can't remember what it was.

Suffragists = Please can we have the vote.
Suffragettes = GIVE US THE VOTE GRAH!

Firstly it depends on who you mean by suffragettes, because a lot of people use the word as a blanket term to include the suffragists as well. whereas as far as I'm aware, "suffragette" actually just refers to the Women's Social and Political Union, the militant, female-only group that broke away from the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.

Anyway. From what I remember when I studied this, the views on it are extremely divided. On the one hand you could say that the violent protests of the suffragettes got the government's attention whereas the peaceful actions of the suffragists were easy to ignore. On the other hand you could say that the actions of the suffragettes actually backed up one of the government's justifications for denying female suffrage, ie that women were irrational and hysterical.

In terms of how much they ultimately contributed towards women getting the vote, there are a lot of different views on the subject. Obviously they did a great deal for many years to raise public awareness of the issue, but there were many other factors as well (I'm talking about suffrage in Britain here, I don't know much about the movements in other countries). In particular, the first world war meant women took on jobs previously done only by men, thus "proving" their worth as citizens and potential voters. The government obviously couldn't praise them for doing "manly" jobs one day and then the next day deny them the vote on the grounds that they were too weak and prone to hysteria.

well said

I know someone threw themselves in front of the kings horse and died which seemed to speed up the process. However only women who had reached 36 were able to vote

assimilationis lame
blacks" and women hadpotential to turn shit around but noooo
haha
safe integration aint no revolution
but an inevitability

I think they did somethang for women's rights. I admire Emily Davison, even if she was a little silly throwing herself in front of a horse but meh...

Yep. Another mistake.

You would say that.

Hey, at least they tried. Anarchism in the UK was a joke at the time.

Isn't anarchism a joke, period?

It's so naive.

The Suffragettes were held back by the animosity of the far-left, despite Left Turn's apologeticism a post or two ago. The 'communists' and 'socialists' and 'anarchists' didn't give a shit about women - they hated the feminist movement, mostly because it meant no-one was around to make tea after a big meeting. There were as many misogynists - if not more - in the Left as in the Right at the time. The fight for the vote was a noble and courageous one and anyone who makes it out to be different is either ignorant of history or anti-women.

Err... not quite.

The Far Left at the time of the Suffragettes was quite split. The Socialist League of Hyndburn was in a total state of disarray and many of the better people who left the swamp of the SL formed the Social Democratic Federation (even Eleanor Marx was involved) and the SDF *WAS* involved in the Suffragette movment.

Sylvia Pankhurst turned her "Women's Dreadnaught" into the Workers Dreadnaught.

Even Ms. Cobina said the problem was fixating on the vote and ignoring other issues.

Ayeaye, Pankhurst got a lot of hassle for sticking up with the Workers as well as the Women (from the Workers as well as the Women! Brave lady.), I'm just saying the Left has a grubby history when it comes to women's rights, especially then. The majority of trades unionists etc were opposed as well.

Funny, the Left never learns does it...are you still in Workers Power?

The left's history isn't squeaky clean, no. It took a fair while for it to get involved in the struggle for abortion rights, but it did in the end thanks to the IS and Women's Voice, who got the TUC on board. The left isn't a homegenous block, and different strata get involved in different things.

I'm not a formal member anymore. Membership requires you to be active, and for various reasons, I can't be at the moment. I'm still in political solidarity with WP, though; but I'm not an actual, subs-paying, member.

Sounds about right to me. Admittedly I don't know a great deal about either the Suffragettes or the Suffragists, but I'm highly suspicious of "popular" accounts of who these women were and what they did. There's a dismissive undertone in most stuff I read, with every bad story about a suffragette (Emily Davison throwing herself in front of a horse) being dredged up over and over again. By extension, every other woman who took part in the movement seems to have been tarred with the same brush and caricatured. From what I've read (as I said, admittedly not much), they seem to be generalized. It goes a bit like this: "Wealthy, well-educated, publicity crazed, militant, smug, sanctimonious women who behaved more and more like hysterical fanatics when their demand was not met. Admittedly their cause was valid."

It reminds me a little of the urban myth's about the history of the "women's liberation" movement. "Bra-burning" never happened, and throwing cabbages at beauty contestants wasn't the top priority of feminists during the late 1960s.
I know most people here will know this of course, but it's amazing how many people think THAT'S how the 1960s/70s feminist movement took off!

I can't help but suspect that (generally), historians are likewise pretty lazy about the Suffragettes and their entire movement has just been subtly trashed.