I am not only here as a soldier temporarily absent from the field at battle; I am here - and that, I think, is the strangest part of my coming - I am here as a person who, according to the law courts of my country, it has been decided, is of no value to the community at all: and I am adjudged because of my life to be a dangerous person, under sentence of penal servitude in a convict prison. It was not militant at all, except that it provoked militancy on the part of those who were opposed to it. Neither the Catt Center nor Iowa State University is affiliated with any individual in the Archives or any political party. You get registered in law unequal standards of morals in marriage, and a married man is encouraged by law to think that he can make as many lapses as he thinks fit in marital fidelity; whereas, if one act of infidelity is proved against her the husband can get rid of her by divorce, can take her children away from her and make her an outcast. That is what happened in the old days. So that you see when you look at it from the legal point of view, it is not such a very, very great gain to become a wife in my country. In fact, every principle of liberty enunciated in any civilized country on earth, with very few exceptions, was intended entirely for men, and when women tried to force the putting into practice of these principles, for women, then they discovered they had come into a very, very unpleasant situation indeed. That was considered ample justification for one of the most costly and bloody wars of modern times. What did he say? The grievances of those who have got power, the influence of those who have got power commands a great deal of attention; but the wrongs and the grievances of those people who have no power at all are apt to be absolutely ignored. You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized. 14 July was an important day in Pankhurst's life. Her husband can give the child away to be educated somewhere else or he can bring whomever he pleases into the house to educate the child. What is the use of locking the stable after the horse is stolen? Well, then that morning I was rung up over and over again by excited gentlemen who begged that those golf links should be spared, saying: "I don't know whether your followers know that we are all suffragists, on our committee, we are entirely in favor of woman suffrage." " Freedom or Death" Speech, November 13, 1913 "Mrs. Hepburn, ladies and gentlemen: Many people come to Hartford to address meetings as advocates of some reform. Emmeline Pankhurst Hartford Speech November 1913 - YouTube April 27, 2007. But it hadn't that effect at all. I come to ask you to help to win this fight. I am here as a soldier who has temporarily left the field of battle in order to explain - it seems strange it should have to be explained - what civil war is like when civil war is waged by women. Their average income, taking the highly skilled woman teacher and averaging her wage with the unskilled home worker, the average income is less than two dollars a week. Emmeline Pankhurst, ne Emmeline Goulden, (born July 14 [ see Researcher's Note ], 1858, Manchester, Englanddied June 14, 1928, London), militant champion of woman suffrage whose 40-year campaign achieved complete success in the year of her death, when British women obtained full equality in the voting franchise. BBC - History - Emmeline Pankhurst Now that is all done away with and the foremost medical men and the foremost scientists are agreeing with the women; they are agreeing with the women that it is quite possible, and it is necessary for the sake of the race itself, that this equal moral code shall be established. I have been in audiences where I have seen men smile when they heard the words "hunger strike", and yet I think there are very few men today who would be prepared to adopt a "hunger strike" for any cause. We have got in Ireland today a very serious situation. Well now, let me come to the situation as we find it. Difficult. Think what would happen in any country if the men in industry of that country had to subsist on a wage like that. Great speeches of the 20th century | Theguardian | The Guardian Now, that was done in England, and the government thought they had crushed us. Despite being academically gifted, she did not Though often criticized for her strongly militant tactics, her contributions toward achieving women's suffrage in Great Britain are well-recognized. Now, first of all I want to make you understand the inevitableness of revolution and civil war, even on the part of women, when you reach a certain stage in the development of a community's life. I am going to talk later on about the grievances, but I want to first of all make you understand that this civil war carried on by women is not the hysterical manifestation which you thought it was, but was carefully and logically thought out, and I think when I have finished you will say, admitted the grievance, admitted the strength of the cause, that we could not do anything else, that there was no other way, that we had either to submit to intolerable injustice and let the woman's movement go back and remain in a worse position than it was before we began, or we had to go on with these methods until victory was secured; and I want also to convince you that these methods are going to win, because when you adopt the methods of revolution there are two justifications which I feel are necessary or to be desired. That is the whole point of our agitation. For racial reasons, for religious reasons, for economic reasons, the majority of the people there do not want home rule at all. American suffragists can do that very well for themselves. When I was on trial they produced a little girl as a witness, a little girl who had found something in the neighborhood of the house of the chancellor of the exchequer, which was destroyed by some women, and this little girl was produced as a witness. And so this "Cat and Mouse Act" which is being used against women today has failed: and the home secretary has taken advantage of the fact that parliament is not sitting, to revive and use alongside of it the forcible feeding. What she wants is to get something practical done, and whether it is done out of sympathy or whether it is done out of fear, or whether it is done because you want to be comfortable again and not be worried in this way, doesn't particularly matter so long as you get it. It is not at all difficult if revolutionaries come to you from Russia, if they come to you from China, or from any other part of the world, if they are men, to make you understand revolution in five minutes, every man and every woman to understand revolutionary methods when they are adopted by men. Women are very slow to rouse, but once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible. The great thing is to see that no more damage is done than is absolutely necessary, that you do just as much as will arouse enough feeling to bring about peace, to bring about an honorable peace for the combatants, and that is what we have been doing. They put women in prison for long terms of imprisonment, for making a nuisance of themselves - that was the expression when they took petitions in their hands to the door of the House of Commons; and they thought that by sending them to prison, giving them a day's imprisonment, would cause them to all settle down again and there would be no further trouble. I dare say you have followed with considerable interest the story of how the Chinese revolutionary, Sun Yat-sen, conducted the Chinese revolution from England. When they felt they couldn't wait any longer, when they laid all the arguments before an obstinate British government that they could think of, and when their arguments were absolutely disregarded, when every other means had failed, they began by the tea party at Boston, and they went on until they had won the independence of the United States of America. Life is sweet to all of us. Men of all nationalities have come to America, and they have not gone away empty-handed, because American sympathy has been extended to struggling peoples all over the world. Great speeches: Emmeline . Well, that is the function of women in life: it is our business to care for human beings, and we are determined that we must come without delay to the saving of the race. It was thirty years ago in England that a splendid woman named Josephine Butler fought to establish an equal moral code for both sexes. Some of the guards - I think men who had never known what it was to earn a living, who knew nothing of the difficulties of a man's life, let alone the difficulties of a woman's life - came out, and they said: "Why did you break our windows? During the preceding 18 months she had been imprisoned 12 times, but had served no more than 30. She made . She became one of the most prominent figures advocating for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom and was the founder and leader of the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). "How are they going to persuade people that they ought to have the vote by breaking their windows?" Good Press, Dec 8, 2020 - Nature - 35 pages. That is literally true. Click here to read part 2 of the speech. We do more in England in our civil war without the sacrifice of a single life than they did in the war of the Balkan States when they had the siege of Adrianople, because during the whole of that siege, in the course of which thousands of people were killed and houses were shelled and destroyed, telegraphic communication was continuous the whole time. The other baby is an impatient baby and cries lustily, screams and kicks and makes everybody unpleasant until it is fed. Well, if we have helped at all, if, as has been said from the chair tonight, we have even helped to rouse suffrage enthusiasm in Connecticut, can you blame me very much if I come and tell you of the desperate struggle we are having, of how the government is trying to break us down in every possible way, even by involving us in lawsuits, and trying to frighten our subscribers by threatening to prosecute even people who help us by subscribing money? We fought a great war not very long ago, in South Africa. It is very irrational you say: even if these women had sufficient intelligence to understand what they were doing, and really did want the vote, they have adopted very irrational means for getting the vote. Putting sentiment aside, people who really want reforms learn that lesson very quickly. It is perfectly evident to any logical mind that when you have got the vote, by the proper use of the vote in sufficient numbers, by combination, you can get out of any legislature whatever you want, or, if you cannot get it, you can send them about their business and choose other people who will be more attentive to your demands, But, it is clear to the meanest intelligence that if you have not got the vote, you must either submit to laws just or unjust, administration just or unjust, or the time inevitably comes when you will revolt against that injustice and use violent means to put an end to it, That is so logically correct that we hear politicians today talk about the inherent right of revolution and rebellion on the part of human beings suffering from an intolerable injustice, and in England today we are having a situation brought about by men which exactly illustrates the case. Then take her as a mother. We know this, that whatever women's wishes might be, it is their duty for the sake of the race, itself, to save the race, to insist upon having this question of the moral health of the nation approached from the women's point of view and settled by women in cooperation with men. It has become the subject of revolution and civil war, and so tonight I am not here to advocate woman suffrage. So far from it having that effect more and more women have been doing these things and I had incited them to do, and were more determined in doing them: so that the long determinate sentence had no effect in crushing the agitation. First published in 1987. One of the things which gives strength to our agitation is that the women who are taking an active part in it are not the poorest women, are not the overworked women; they are the women who are held to be fortunate, the women who have no special personal grievance of their own. Men were told that it was necessary for their health that we should have an unequal moral code. Emmeline Pankhurst - Freedom or Death | Genius Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928), ne Goulden, fought her whole adult life against the discrimination of women. In those days the doctors were against her; practically everybody was against her. I want very briefly to say a few words about all. On that day, Emmeline Pankhurst led a deputation of around 300 women to Parliament: this resulted in long and violent clashes with the police. 3 /5. It always has been so. Fawcett described their ethos in a speech . Great speeches of the 20th century Emmeline Pankhurst Freedom or death - part 3 Click here to go back to part 1 Emmeline Pankhurst Thu 26 Apr 2007 19.08 EDT I refer to the fact that for generations Irish agitators, Irish lawbreakers, Irish criminals, who have been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in English convict prisons, have come over to America and have asked the people of the United States to give them money, to send them help in various forms to fight the Irish rebellion. When his daughters went out to post a letter, he couldn't tell if they went harmlessly out to make a tennis engagement at that pillar-box by posting a letter, or whether they went to put some corrosive matter in that would burn all the letters up inside of that box. I agreed, but I pointed out to the judge and the jury that one of the reasons why women were in revolt was because that little girl, whose head just appeared over the top of the witness box, was considered old enough by the laws of her country to take upon herself the terrible responsibilities of wifehood and motherhood, and women could not get it altered, no politicians would listen to us, when we asked to have the marriage law altered in that particular. We have been proving in our own person that government does not rest upon force; it rests upon consent; as long as people consent to government, it is perfectly easy to govern, but directly they refuse then no power on earth can govern a human being, however feeble, who withholds his or her consent: and all of the strange happenings that you have read about over here, have been manifestations of a refusal to consent on the part of the women. He has been making precisely the same kind of speeches that I made up to the month of March last, with this difference: that while he has justified the shedding of human blood in a revolution, I have always said that nothing would bring me to the point of claiming that we should destroy human life in the course of our woman's agitation. People have said: "Why does Mrs. Pankhurst come to America? She happened to be an actress, a woman who had come into our militant movement because she knew of the difficulties and dangers and temptations of the actress's life, of how badly paid she is, what her private sorrows are and her difficulties, and so she had come into the militant movement to get votes for actresses as quickly as possible, so that through the vote they could secure better conditions. Emmeline Pankhurst Speech: Freedom or death - Hartford, Connecticut on November 13, 1913 Key Extracts "We women, in trying to make our case clear, always have to make as part of our argument, and urge upon men in our audience the fact - a very simple fact - that women are human beings." You could only explain the strange phenomena in that way. Great speeches: Emmeline Pankhurst | World | The Guardian I think they are making things extremely lively for the politicians up there, and I don't know whether every American woman knows what those two women, working in conjunction with others, are doing for the enfranchisement of American women at this moment. We have Sir Edward Carson preaching revolution and justifying bloodshed in defense of what he calls the rights of the manhood of Ulster, the right of having themselves governed in the way they prefer. Emmeline Pankhurst's "Freedom or Death" Speech Energizes Connecticut Then, the latest manifestation, the latest cause of militancy has been the breaking of the great conspiracy of silence with regard to moral questions and the question of social disease that we have had during the last few years. Well then, there were the men of pleasure, or the businessmen who were so busy earning money during the week that all they could think of when the week came to an end was recreation, and the great recreation in England today is playing golf. I have managed in London to make audiences of business men who came into the meetings very, very angry with us indeed, some of whom had their telephonic communication cut off for several hours and had not been able to even get telegrams from their stock-brokers in cities far distant, who naturally came to our meetings in a very angry frame of mind, understand the situation: and if it has been possible to make them understand, if some of them even get fairly enthusiastic about our methods, it ought to be possible, Mrs. Hepburn, for me to explain the situation to an audience in Hartford, who, after all, are far enough off to be able to see, unlike men in our own country who are not able to see wood for trees. It is our business to show the close relationship there is between the appalling state of social health and the political degradation of women. Well, the ordinary army man is not much in politics, but he very often, because of his aristocratic and social connections, has considerable influence if he would use it. The majority of men in Ireland desired it; presumably the majority of women acquiesced in their desire, but they were not asked whether they wished it or not. Suffrage and the Pankhursts - Routledge Historical Resources So much for the industrial situation. But they found that it did not quell the agitation, that more and more women came in and even passed that terrible ordeal, and that they were not able with all their forcible feeding to make women serve out their unjust sentences. It was later transcribed and issued as a pamphlet. They also broke the windows of many of the clubs, the smart clubs in Piccadilly. All rights reserved. I am not going to tell you how the women got to the mains and cut the wires; but it was done. Now, that went on so long that the government felt they had lost their power, and that they were unable to cope with the situation. In these speeches, Emmeline Pankhurst and other leading militant suffragists defend themselves against the charges of damaging city property in their attempt to publicize the issue of women's suffrage. He decides absolutely the conditions in which that child is to live; he decides how it is to be educated; he can even decide what religion it is to profess, and the mother's consent is not obtained to any of these decisions. So I make no apologies for coming, and I make no apologies, Mrs. Hepburn, for asking this audience if any of them feel inclined to help me to take back some money from America and put it with the money that I know our women are raising by desperate personal sacrifice at home, so that when we begin our next year's campaign, facing a general election, as probably we shall face next year, our anxieties on the money side will not be so heavy as they would have been if I had not found strength and health enough to come and carry out this somewhat arduous tour in the United States of America. Prevention is better than cure. And so it happens in civil war. I would like to suggest that if later on, while I am explaining these matters to you, there comes into the mind of any man or woman in the audience some better plan for getting what we want out of an obstinate government, I would be thankful and grateful if that person, man or woman, would tell me of some better plan than ours for dealing with the situation. Ten years ago there was hardly any woman suffrage movement at all. But it didn't happen so at all: instead of the women giving it up, more women did it, and more and more and more women did it until there were three hundred women at a time, who had not broken a single law, only "made a nuisance of themselves" as the politicians say. A speech delivered at Parsons Theater in Hartford, Connecticut, on November 13, 1913. Together with her mother, Emmeline, and sister, Sylvia, Christabel Pankhurst was one of the leaders of the women's suffrage movement in Britain, fighting for votes for women. Great speeches of the 20th century: Emmeline Pankhurst's Freedom or I ask American men in this meeting, what would you say if in your state you were faced with that alternative, that you must either kill them or give them their citizenship - women, many of whom you respect, women whom you know have lived useful lives, women whom you know, even If you do not know them personally, are animated with the highest motives, women who are in pursuit of liberty and the power to do useful public service?