Emmeline pankhurst freedom or death speech. Freedom or Death by Emmeline Pankhurst 2022-12-24
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Emmeline Pankhurst's "Freedom or Death" speech is a powerful and poignant call to action for women's suffrage. Pankhurst, a prominent British suffragette and leader of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), gave this speech on November 13, 1913 at the Opera House in Manchester, England. In it, she made a compelling case for the need for women to have the right to vote, and for the use of militant tactics to achieve this goal.
Pankhurst began her speech by recounting the history of the suffragette movement and the struggles that women had faced in their efforts to win the right to vote. She emphasized the importance of this right, arguing that it was essential for women to have a say in the decisions that affected their lives. Pankhurst then went on to argue that the time for peaceful protests and appeals to reason had passed, and that more drastic action was needed to bring about change.
"We have tried every other means," she declared. "We have petitioned, we have begged, we have demonstrated, we have been insulted, we have been dragged through the streets, we have been thrown into prison. And all the time the government has done nothing. And so now we have decided that the only thing left for us to do is to fight."
Pankhurst's call for militant action was met with both enthusiasm and outrage, as many saw it as a radical departure from traditional suffragette tactics. However, Pankhurst was unapologetic in her beliefs, and she argued that women could no longer afford to wait for change to come. "We are not asking for special privileges," she said. "We are asking for our rights as citizens. We are asking for the right to live our own lives, to be the masters of our own destiny."
Pankhurst's "Freedom or Death" speech was a defining moment in the suffragette movement, and it remains an important and powerful testament to the determination and courage of women fighting for their rights. It is a reminder that, even in the face of overwhelming opposition, it is possible to stand up for what we believe in and to fight for a better future.
Freedom or Death by Emmeline Pankhurst
He was always expecting his wife Emily Leighton to watch the children all day, everyday without a break for herself. Well now, we have had a royal commission on divorce and we have had a report, but there is no security for women that they are to have justice under a new law so long as men are chosen by men to legislate and those men are likely to register the moral opinions of men, not the moral opinions of women, in legislation. It is about eight years since the word militant was first used to describe what we were doing. But Pankhurst and her following cherished the Angela Grimke's Bearing Witness Against Slavery 1510 Words 7 Pages Because of sexist opinions of the time, many people believed that a woman had no power to create change, especially in government since she could not vote. Suppose the men of Hartford had a grievance, and they laid that grievance before their legislature, and the legislature obstinately refused to listen to them, or to remove their grievance, what would be the proper and the constitutional and the practical way of getting their grievance removed? Pankhurst come to America? We have to look facts in the face. 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? 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. They had a leader, a man who formed a part of the last Conservative administration, Sir Edward Carson.
Famous Speech Friday: Emmeline Pankhurst, “Freedom or Death”
If they knew of it at all, they were told in vague terms that it was in order to make the lives of the rest of the women safe; they were told it was a necessary evil; they were told it was something that the good woman does not understand and must not know anything about. When they put us in prison at first, simply for taking petitions, we submitted; we allowed them to dress us in prison clothes; we allowed them to put us in solitary confinement; we allowed them to put us amongst the most degraded of criminals; we learned of some of the appalling evils of our so-called civilisation that we could not have learned in any other way. They are too weak to speak, but they go amongst their fellow workers just to show that their spirits are unquenched, and that their spirit is alive, and they mean to go on as long as life lasts. Well, they little know what women are. This helps add more to the seriousness of the subject and theme created which is the government needs change and acceptance, not a replacement. Then people began to say that while they believed they had no criticism of militancy, as militancy, while they thought it was quite justifiable for people to revolt against intolerable injustice, it was absurd and ridiculous for women to attempt it because women could not succeed.
Today women are working in my country, are sacrificing and suffering to win the political enfranchisement of their sex, so that we may get better laws and better administration of the laws. The suffragettes in Australia argued that they were intelligent enough to vote, that it was unfair for them to be taxed without representation, and that they were equal to men therefore should have equal rights. Now, I want to say to you who think women cannot succeed, we have brought the government of England to this position, that it has to face this alternative: either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote. When it was said taxation without representation is tyranny, when it was "Taxation of men without representation is tyranny," everybody quite calmly accepted the fact that women had to pay taxes and even were sent to prison if they failed to pay them - quite right. Well, it is perfectly obvious at the next general election, when the legislature is elected, the men of Hartford in sufficient numbers would turn out that legislature and elect a new one: entirely change the personnel of an obstinate legislature which would not remove their grievance. 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. Many of you have expressed sympathy, probably even practical sympathy, with revolutionaries in Russia.
Great speeches of the 20th century: Emmeline Pankhurst's Freedom or death
Now, one woman was arrested on an occasion when a great many windows were broken in London, as a protest against a piece of trickery on the part of the government, which will be incredible in fifty years, when the history of the movement is read. Well, the last stage of this struggle, and the struggle is coming to a head, is this; that Sir Edward Carson has been making speeches in which he has gloried in having broken the law; he has challenged the British government to arrest him; arms have been shipped to Ireland; and there is not a club, a young men's club, a workingman's club, or the middle class or the upper class men's club, where they are not drilling and preparing for civil war. I think I have said enough at least to make you understand that this uprising on the part of the British women has as much justification and as much provocation as any uprising on the part of men in their desire for political liberty in the past. Well, our women decided to terminate those unjust sentences at the earliest possible moment by the terrible means of the hunger strike. Your right to send to France and ask for help was never questioned. I come in the intervals of prison appearance: I come after having been four times imprisoned under the "Cat and Mouse Act", probably going back to be rearrested as soon as I set my foot on British soil.
So here am I. How different the reasoning is that men adopt when they are discussing the cases of men and those of women. Well, then it was that women began to withhold their consent. Have you read about American dollars that have been given the Irish law-breakers? 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. Suppose the men of Hartford had a grievance, and they laid that grievance before their legislature, and the legislature obstinately refused to listen to them, or to remove their grievance, what would be the proper and the constitutional and the practical way of getting their grievance removed? They had to dip back into the middle ages to find a means of repressing the women in revolt, and the whole history shows how futile it is for men who have been considered able statesmen to deal with dissatisfied women who are determined to win their citizenship and who will not submit to government until their consent is obtained. Now, that was done in England, and the government thought they had crushed us.
Emmeline Pankhurst Freedom Or Death 1913 Speech at Jeffrey Leibowitz blog
I am not going to tell you how it was done. The British government has passed more stringent laws to deal with this agitation than it ever found necessary during all the history of political agitation in my country. Well, in our civil war people have suffered, but you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs; you cannot have civil war without damage to something. 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. It is only people who feel an intolerable sense of oppression who would adopt a means of that kind.
If there had been a stock broker in Adrianople who wanted to communicate with a customer in London, he could have done it; there might have been a little delay, but he was able to do it, but we, without the loss of a single life in our war, in this effort to rouse business men to compel the government to give us the vote, because they are the people who can do it in the last resort, we entirely prevented stock brokers in London from telegraphing to stock brokers in Glasgow and vice versa: for one whole day telegraphic and telephonic communication was entirely stopped. There are women who are being carried from their sick beds on stretchers into meetings. No man was ever put out of a public meeting for asking a question until Votes for Women came onto the political horizon. During the early 20th century, while men relaxed in the comfort of their homes, women waged a war. When you think of the object of that war it really makes some of us feel very indignant at the hypocrisy of some of our critics.
You won the civil war by the sacrifice of human life when you decided to emancipate the negro. 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. Well, they little know what women are. Well, I might spend two or three nights dealing with the industrial situation as it affects women, with the legal position of women, with the social position of women. Now, that went on so long that the government felt that they were unable to cope. It has become the subject of revolution and civil war, and so tonight I am not here to advocate woman suffrage.
