The third of a series of workshops on the Suffragettes will take place in the Wills Memorial Building (Room 3.32), 30 June 2014 at 17.00. To attend please email Lois Bibbings (Lois.S.Bibbings@Bristol.ac.uk).
Workshop 3: Suffragettes: Contemporaries and Contexts
This event focuses upon suffragettes in their time period, looking at contemporary movements and ideas. Three speakers will present papers and there will be an opportunity for questions and discussion. (Drinks and nibbles will be provided.)
The papers:
Gwen Seabourne (Law School, University of Bristol)
‘Friends and Enemies: ‘Suffragette’ Incidents in Abergavenny, 1913 (Law, Bristol)
In summer 1913, there was tension and suspicion in the Monmouthshire market town of Abergavenny. The National Eisteddfod of Wales was to be held there in August, and there were particular reasons to suspect trouble. The Eisteddfod had been the scene of disturbances in 1909 and 1912, and suffragette hate-figures, Reginald McKenna and Lloyd George were likely to attend. An ‘anonymous Welshman’ was said to have threatened to shoot any suffragette attempting to disrupt the Eisteddfod. The ensuing days did indeed bring incidents relating to the campaign for votes for women, though there was no direct attack on the Eisteddfod. There was some probably genuine destruction by ‘militant suffragettes’ in Abergavenny, and also a case of a young man from Abergavenny creating a hoax ‘suffragette’ incident shortly afterwards. This paper will consider the suspicions and actual incidents in Abergavenny in 1913 in the light of scholarship on regional and national variation in suffrage activity and attitudes, and particularly in relation to the complex relationship between the ‘woman suffrage question’ and prevailing ideas and practices of Welshness/Cymreictod.
Lois Bibbings (Law School and Centre for Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol )
Gender Dissidents: From Suffragettes to First World War Conscientious Objectors
This paper explores links, intersections and parallels between suffragists and suffragettes, on the one hand, and WW1 conscientious objectors to compulsory military service, on the other. In doing so, it looks at the actions and treatment of these women and men, as well as how they were seen by others and how they viewed themselves.
Karen Morgan (University of Bristol, Open University, co-founder of Vegatopia (www.vegatopia.com) and former Vice Chair of the Vegan Society)
‘No Cruelty is Useful’: Brown Dogs and Suffragettes
The anti-vivisection movement in the mid Victorian – Edwardian period frequently identified links between both women and animals as victims. To some campaigners also, the issues of vivisection and women’s suffrage were inextricably intertwined, with one commentator suggesting that “The day that women get the vote will be the day on which the death-knell of vivisection will be sounded”. This paper explores connections between the anti-vivisection movement and those who fought not only for female suffrage but also against the multi-faceted oppression of women within both the public and private spheres.
Background to the workshops:
In October 1913, the University’s sports pavilion was burned down, probably by militant suffragettes participating in a campaign of arson intended to draw attention to their cause and to force the government to move towards allowing women the vote. Bristol University students then attacked the shop and local headquarters of the Women’s Social and Political Union, situated on Queen’s Road opposite the site of the Wills Memorial Building.
The incidents were widely reported in the local and national press.
Inspired by this story as well as the wider activities of campaigners for female enfranchisement, ‘Deeds and Words’ is a series of five workshops which will reflect upon the campaigns for female suffrage locally and nationally, their antecedents and successors, in a creative and interdisciplinary manner.
The workshops are organised by Lois Bibbings and Gwen Seabourne in the School of Law and are funded by IAS.
Further details of the workshops and linked events and activities will be available at:
http://bristol.ac.uk/ias/workshops/current-workshops/deedsandwords.htmland