Here are three pictures.
Non-Scots are thinking: Who are they? Scots might have a more emotional response.
If you're a woman, the First Minister of Scotland, who lives here,
the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, and possibly the Scottish Parliament's most
effective leader of the opposition, are a measure of progress,
because it wasn't always like this. If you're interested in the people,
places and events in Scottish history, then click the subscribe
button at the bottom right of the screen. In the meantime, let me tell you a story.
The campaign for Votes for Women started ...? Well not before 1832.
You see, before 1832, women WERE allowed to vote,
in the unlikely circumstances that they had enough land and property,
but when the 1832 Reform Act expanded the franchise
to anyone paying a rent of 10 per year or more, women were specifically excluded.
I mean, Mr Bones the Butcher voting's one thing,
but his wife? Oh, no, no, no, no.
In 1867, a Scottish born shop
owner in Manchester called Lilly Maxwell met the property criteria
and was accidentally included on the voter's roll
before they realised she was a woman. All hell broke loose,
but suffragists forced the case in court where her vote was declared illegal
and civilisation was saved. Eight years later,
John Stewart Mills was elected to Parliament on a platform of introducing votes for women,
but his amendment to the 1867 Reform Act was defeated and THAT'S
what started campaigning proper. Women's Suffrage Societies sprang up in Edinburgh,
Manchester and London. In 1872
ninety-seven women's suffrage meetings were held in Scotland
and within two years there were societies throughout Scotland.
2 million signatures, petitions, protest, letters from women, men
and some town councils , but women voting for Parliament was no closer.
Women were too weak, too irrational, incapable of complex thinking,
which is why they couldn't enter university either.
Until The Edinburgh 7, led by Sophia Jex Blake entered Edinburgh University.
Now there'll be a video about them and the Surgeon's Hall Riot after this one at the end.
From 1870 women COULD be elected
to school boards for the first time. Flora Stevenson,
who lived in this house, was. She and her sisters are commemorated with a plaque. She did such a good job
on the Edinburgh school board, she was repeatedly elected for 33 years.
She became the first woman Chairman of that board.
She was elected as one of the Board's representatives on the Edinburgh Educational
Trust, and the Heriots' Trust. She was sought after
as an adviser and consultant. The Board even named a primary school after her.
She was made an honorary Fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland, she was made an honorary
Doctor of Law by Edinburgh University and she was admitted as a Burgess of the City of
Edinburgh, ,
but she was just too feeble minded to vote for her MP,
and after all her accolades, she died in 1905,
never having achieved that right. The Liberal Government weren't willing to
bend to women who campaigned for constitutional change with letters, petitions or lobbying.
Women who were now called suffragists. Then in 1903
a woman called Emeline Pankhurst, and her two daughters,
began the Women's Social and Political Union, with the slogan
'Deeds Not Words', which is pretty scary,
because normally with my missus, just the words are enough.
In 1905 Christabel Pankhurst disrupted a Liberal meeting
by shouting 'Votes for Women', before spitting in a policeman's eye.
The Pankhursts had given birth to suffragettes.
The next year they sent Teresa Billington north, to organise the Women's Social and
Political Union in Glasgow. Now the Glasgow and West of
Scotland Association for Women's Suffrage had already been running for four years
and refused to have dealings with these militants.
Some women did switch to the Women's Social and Political Union,
but the next year most of them broke away again to form the National Women's
Social and Political Union, which later changed its name to
the Women's Freedom League. They had considered the name
Women's Popular People's Front of Judea, but worried that might be called splitters .
Differences were emerging north and south of the border.
The militant faction led by the Pankhursts was top down and dictatorial,
and a large group of Scottish women left for the more democratic Women's Freedom League.
Now it may have just been personality differences,
but I'm sure some will say that it's that same attitude to democratic decision making
that differentiated Presbyterians from Anglicans,
but there was another north south divide. You see the Pankhursts' WSPU decided to oppose
the Liberal government at every turn, breaking up their meetings, campaigning
against them in by-elections. They would even campaign against
Liberals in by-elections where the candidate themselves supported women's suffrage.
Now The Liberals were a party of Home Rule, and hugely popular in Scotland,
leaving Scottish suffragettes with some hard choices
The new militancy brought other choices too. To be a Suffragist
or a Suffragette. Suffragists, insisted
on change by constitutional means, and joined the National Union of Women's
Suffrage Societies, the NUWSS.
Pankhurst's Women s Social and Political Union, WSPU,
went for non-constitutional disruption, but there was even a Scottish
Anti Suffrage League. Women who campaigned politically against
women having a political voice. Can you imagine that protest?
Can't vote, won't vote! Sorry darlin, your opinion doesn't matter.
Well we've won then! One of the leading lights of the
Scottish Anti Suffrage League was the Marchioness of Tullibardine, Later Duchess of Athol,
who was such an effective speaker and political, campaigner that she became one of the first
women elected to Parliament, presumably on the platform of free
pressed shirts for all, because she just loved irony.
When militancy started, it wasn't really that militant,
but at the time, peaceful protest outside a sitting London parliament was a crime.
Militant protests didn't start in Scotland until 1909,
but before that Scotswomen had travelled down to London to protest outside Parliament
for nothing more than the right to vote. On 5th July 1909 one Scotswoman,
Marion Wallace-Dunlop, who described herself as a direct descendant
of the mother of William Wallace,
stencilled an extract from the Bill of Rights
on a wall in the House of Commons and she was banged up as a common criminal.
She demanded to be treated as a political prisoner and went on hunger strike,
and that started an entire new phase of suffragette protest in Britain
and another distinction between the approach north and south of the border.
South of the border the response to hunger strikes was force feeding.
Women were brutally manhandled and a tube forced up their nose and down their throat
and liquid food poured in. Sometimes the tube wouldn't turn,
the nose bit in the tube and it caused all sorts of damage to the tissues and organs in the head.
Sometimes they would deal with resistance by cutting the gums and inserting gags
before feeding a tube through the mouth.
Sometimes the tube went down the wrong way and liquid entered the lungs, causing pneumonia.
The process was horrific and decent people were outraged.
Here in Scotland hunger striking suffragettes were released rather than being subjected to this.
The Cat and Mouse Act was introduced to avoid force feeding.
When a woman went on hunger strike they just waited until she was ill, and then released her,
until she was healthy enough to be taken back to prison,
where she became ill again. She would serve out her sentence like
this bit by bit over years. In 1910-11
an all-parliamentary committee was set up to draft a bill on women's suffrage,
and things calmed down a bit, and then, Prime Minister Asquith,
said no more parliamentary time would be given, so suffragettes went on a window
smashing campaign. Look, I tell you what,
we could maybe tag women's votes on to a Reform Bill in early 1913,
how about that? But when the parliamentary debate started
the women's suffrage aspect was to be left out. That literally
lit the blue touch paper to a series of arson attacks on public buildings.
This happened in Scotland, England and Ireland, in fact, in 1914,
one of the first bombings in Ulster wasn't republican sympathisers,
but suffragettes.
In Scotland one of the key terrorists was Ethel Moorhead.
I know, she doesn't even sound Muslim. There's more about her in Leah Leneman's
book 'The Scottish Suffragettes', but her activities broke the dam and
led to her being the first woman to be force fed in Scotland,
here in Perth prison on 21st of February 1914.
At one point they even tried anal feeding methods, leaving
look there's a limit even to what I'm prepared to describe.
The people of Scotland were shocked that we had descended to southern techniques.
There were vigils held here outside Perth Prison, whilst women suffered indignities inside.
Now I don't want to glorify what are clearly terrorist activities,
but if the justification for not giving women the vote
is that they're not tough enough and can't deal with complex ideas and processes
then surely women's ability to organise and run an arson campaign, a terrorist organisation,
deal with prison torture, and remember which day
the brown lidded bins go out, burns that theory to the ground
more than any of the buildings targeted. This is Dundee.
With Edinburgh and Glasgow, it was a key location for suffragist and suffragette activity,
and in 1908, the spotlight was about to shine brighter.
The local MP here was elevated to the Lords. Now a prominent Liberal cabinet member had
recently been ousted from his seat in Manchester,
so was parachuted in as candidate for this safe seat.
His name was Winston Churchill.
This was a battleground. Now Mary Phillips,
one of the first WSPU women to have been arrested,
launched herself into campaigning against Churchill,
reminding audiences of the traditions of Scotland,
of the fights for freedom in which our fore-fathers led, and in which our foremothers
were never found behind the men of England in striking a blow for justice for women.
How we have sought to stir their pride and their patriotism in these matters,
and by asking them never to allow it to be said that Scotland was a dumping ground
for England's second-hand goods. Ooooft
This firebrand then headed down to London to further arrest,
making her the longest imprisoned suffragette. On her release she was welcomed in London
with bagpipes and tartan clad suffragettes under the slogan
"Ye Mauna Tramp on the Scotch Thistle Laddie". Formidable as Mary Phillips was,
Churchill also had to face up to Mary Maloney, of the Women's Freedom League.
Her approach was different. She just followed Churchill around
and whenever he started to speak, she rang a big school dinner bell so that nobody could hear him.
Churchill was bruised, and slightly deaf,
but survived. His star was to shine in WW2,
but it was the preceding war that changed the fortunes of women's suffrage
and demanded a new set of decisions from women. What to do when war breaks out?
Militancy was suspended and two of the Pankhursts
threw themselves into full throated support for fighting the Boche,
although a third was a pacifist, and set up charities to help women affected by the war.
Back here in Scotland, Elsie Inglis had been one
of the first students in the medical school set up by Sophia Jex Blake of Edinburgh 7 fame,
remember there s a video coming up. She'd been an eager suffragist,
travelling round Scotland, speaking and campaigning.
When the war started, she was 50 and in poor health.
She offered her services to the War Office, but they told her,
'My good lady, go home and sit still.' She mobilised the Scottish Federation to
organise all-female medical units.
The British Government rebuffed her, but the French and the Serbs didn't.
Thus started the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service.
Over a thousand women sent to battle zones in France, Serbia and Macedonia.
Elsie herself became a prisoner of war when Macedonia was invaded.
Her war finally ended evacuating her team over thousands of miles in November
1917, knowing that she was suffering from cancer,
and the day after arriving back in Britain, she died.
During the war women had to weigh a complex set of issues and judgements about women's suffrage,
militarism, pacifism, patriotism versus the good of humanity,
as well as taking on men's jobs.
I'm pretty sure they were up to voting for an MP.
I don't know if that's what convinced politicians,
or was it that the war brought coalition government,
so if one party was seen to cave in to women, then all were.
If there was ever a time to allow women the vote
without a political risk, then this was the time to do it.
So finally in 1918, Parliament passed an
act granting the vote to women, over 30
with minimum property requirements. Which prompts some questions for you
to discuss in the comments section. As you read Leah Leneman's book,
most of the women are educated, middle class, often aristocratic.
To be a proper suffragette you were expected to have gone to prison.
Now, if you were a middle or upper class woman of independent means, you might be able to do that.
But if you were a woman working in a Dundee jute mill,
providing the main household income with a husband who couldn't find work,
you may end up in the more clandestine activity of pouring acid into letterboxes,
but you'll never be accepted as a real suffragette.
Social class can even stop you being a freedom fighter.
Women who protested in order to be arrested, women who set fire to things, but hid,
women who didn't break the law at all. What's the rationale
and morality of each? And why is it that in the 21st Century, the
women whose pictures that I showed at the start, still face a level and style of abuse that
their male counterparts don't, and maybe most importantly
why is it that some still don't vote?
A link to the fantastic story of Sophia Jex Blake and the Edinburgh seven is coming up
on screen now. In the meantime, tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.