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UP TO LONDON
The largest demonstrations and processions took place in London. Thousands of women, and supportive men, marched through central London, carrying colourful banners and placards, and dressed in the suffrage colours: green, white and purple for the WSPU or green, white and red for the NUWSS. Bands played, women sang songs of suffrage and hundreds of passers by lined the streets to watch these courageous women marching by. Hastings’ suffragists and suffragettes were keen to do their bit and show their commitment to the struggle. In 1907 Hastings suffragist Jane Strickland took part in one of the first large demonstrations. More than 3,000 women marched led by Millicent Fawcett. It became known as the ‘Mud March’ because the weather was so bad that mud caked the women’s long skirts. In June 1908 activists from Hastings and St Leonards, including Mrs Harlow Phibbs, Isabella Darent Harrison, Lettice MacMunn and Jane Strickland boarded trains from Hastings and went up to London for a huge demonstration organised by the NUWSS. At least 10,000 women assembled on the Embankment and made their way to Albert Hall. The procession, which was more than two miles long, was divided into eight sections, with Hastings and St Leonard’s campaigners in the first section.
Later that month Elsie Bowerman and her mother Edith, together with other local campaigners boarded specially organised excursion trains from Hastings, Warrior Square or West Marina up to Victoria Station in London to take part in a mammoth demonstration organised by the WSPU. Seven separate processions converged on Hyde Park, accompanied by many bands. An estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people took part but it had no impact on Prime Minister Asquith who continued to refuse women the vote. 24
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MARCH OF THE WOMEN
In 1910 composer and suffragette Ethel Smyth composed the music for a song called ‘March of the Women.’ With words by Cicely Hamilton, the song became the official WSPU anthem and eventually the anthem of the whole women’s suffrage movement. Women sang it on marches and demonstrations and in prison.
WEARING WHITE
Many suffragettes were imprisoned for heckling politicians, breaking windows, rushing the Houses of Parliament and generally causing what society thought was a nuisance. On processions, suffragettes who had been imprisoned marched in a block together, wearing white and carrying arrow shaped emblems.
Background: Suffragette procession passing through Parliament Square, London – 19 March 1908 25
