Miss Annie Kenney

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://artsandculture.google.com/search?q=annie%20kenney
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999); Annie Kenney, Memoirs of a Militant (1924)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3214/how-effective-was-the-votes-for-women-campaign-in-bristol
https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3209/whats-the-story-of-the-womens-suffrage-campaign
https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3208/working-class-women-in-the-suffrage-movement

Family information: Annie was the fifth of her parents' 11 children. Sister to suffragettes Jessie and Nellie Kenney.

Additional Information: Annie Kenney was portrayed extensively in WSPU propaganda as a 'suffragette mill girl' but Annie was not entirely happy with that representation. Poverty had forced her into part-time work as a factory mill girl, aged ten years old, but the depth and breadth of her education at her parents' hand, like that of her siblings, belied this simplistic image of her. It was after Annie's mother died in 1905, and while at a meeting of the Oldham Clarion Union, that she heard Christabel Pankhurst speak about women's suffrage (something that Annie admitted she had given little thought to before) and joined the movement. She was subsequently tasked with drumming up support for the vote in working class communities, though many women there would not be granted the vote under the SPU's proposal for votes for women on the same terms as men. In October, she travelled with Christabel Pankhurst to a Liberal Party meeting in Manchester's Free Trade Hall, held by Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey. Annie voiced the question, 'If you are elected, will you do your best to make Woman Suffrage a Government Measure?', to which she received no reply but was instead, along with Christabel, thrown out. In the subsequent scuffle, both women were arrested for obstruction and received a short prison sentence. There was enormous publicity around this daring act, which some locate as the beginning of suffragette militancy. Annie was now 'famous' in the suffrage movement. She spent some more time in London in 1906, shouting out similar questions and interrupting further meetings. Thereafter, Annie remained in the innermost circle of the WSPU leadership. She was arrested in 1906, along with Minnie Baldock and others, for going to 10 Downing Street, knocking on then Prime Minister Campbell-Bannerman's door, and clinging to the door knob when he refused to answer. They were arrested but charges were not pressed. Later in 1906, Annie joined the official deputation to the Prime Minister, dressed in traditional 'mill girl' clogs and shawl, which she was encouraged to wear by the WSPU. She was arrested for her part in two deputations around this time, for which she was sentenced to six weeks and then to two months. In 1907, she spent time mobilising textile workers in Lancashire and Yorkshire, many of whom travelled to London to take part in another deputation to the House of Commons. Annie was officially appointed as a paid organiser in 1907 (with a salary) and spent much time in Bristol ? until 1911. She was helped to settle in there by the Priestman sisters and Lilias Ashworth Hallett, who signed the 1866 suffrage petition. Annie did travel to give speeches elsewhere in the country, and in 1908 was arrested at another deputation to the House of Commons, for which she was sentenced to one month in prison. After the WSPU window-smashing campaign, Christabel Pankhurst fled to Paris and Annie was tasked with ensuring that her ideas of continued militancy were carried out. Annie was arrested several other times, for inciting a riot and damaging property, for which she received three years in prison. She went on hunger and thirst strike and was temporarily released under the 'Cat and Mouse Act'. This pattern was repeated until 1914, as she was arrested, released, rearrested between giving public speeches, fleed (wearing disguises), took part in hunger strikes and was temporarily released, just to begin again. She recounts the head-spinning details of this time in her autobiography Memoirs of a Militant. When war broke out, she travelled to America to help with the women's suffrage campaign there. After the war, she returned to England, married and had a son.