Key moments in the struggle of the suffragettes

Meryl Streep plays Emmeline Pankhurst in the film Suffragette Credit: Pathe

As the upcoming film Suffragette highlights the plight of women fighting to get the vote, we take a look back at ten key moments in the struggle.

The film Suffragette is inspired by true events and stars Academy Award nominees Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter, and three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep.

The period drama will be in UK cinemas from 12 October.

  • Up until the middle of the 1800s less than 10% of the population could vote in elections in the UK and they were all men.

  • The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) formed in 1867. From 1866 to 1902 peaceful agitation by the group led to many petitions, bills and resolutions going before the House of Commons. Some get a second reading, but all are rejected.

Emmeline Pankhurst, the founder of the Women's Social and Political Union Credit: PA/EMPICS Archive

  • Emmeline Pankhurst set up the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. In 1905 the militant campaign begins and Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney are arrested and imprisoned.

Emmeline Pankhurst Credit: PA/EMPICS Archive

  • The Daily Mail newspaper coined the term ‘Suffragettes’ in 1906 as a way to describe younger, more militant activists.

  • In 1909, there are the first hunger strikes by suffragettes and forcible feeding is introduced. Emily Wilding Davison was imprisoned nine times and force fed on 49 occasions. The government rushed through the “Cat and Mouse” Act, meaning those who engaged in hunger strikes could be released into the community and then, once fit, rearrested to continue their sentence.

  • In the same year, Margery Humes chained herself to the statue of Viscount Falkland in St Stephen’s Hall. She was removed by police with bolt cutters and you can still - to this day - see the chink she made in the statue.

  • Militant tactics stopped due to the First Wold War, however during the war women begin to take on a wider range of roles in society, convincing many people that they deserved greater equality and suffrage.

  • In 1918, after a long campaign, around 8.4 million women over the age of 30 in Britain were given the vote.

  • Isle of Man granted the vote to women far earlier, in 1881.

  • Dr Helen Pankhurst, the great-granddaughter of suffragette leader Emmeline, is still campaigning for women's equality: