Miss Christabel Harriette Pankhurst

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m01__cj
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999); June Purvis, 'Christabel Pankhurst and the Women's Social and Political Union', in Joannou and Purvis, The Women's Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Perspectives (1998); Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled: The Story of How we Won the Vote (1959)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3209/whats-the-story-of-the-womens-suffrage-campaign
https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3203/what-were-the-suffrage-campaigners-fighting-for
https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3211/why-do-historians-have-different-views-of-the-suffrage-movement

Family information: Eldest child of Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst, WSPU founder. Sister to Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst.

Additional Information: Christabel joined the North of England Society for Women's Suffrage after meeting its leading lights Esther Roper and Eva Gore-Booth at a series of meetings in 1902?3. She began raising the issue of the vote among textile workers in Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. Christabel gradually became involved with the WSPU once her mother Emmeline founded it in 1903, when she felt that the Independent Labour Party (ILP) ? to whom the Pankhurst family had strong ties ? were not fighting hard enough for votes for women. In an early 1904 pamphlet, Christabel wrote that 'working men show little desire to give women the rights which they possess... it is only when all men and all women stand on an equal footing that their interests become the same.' This foreshadowed Christabel and her mother's later break from the Labour movement and the ILP and, some have argued, from the interests of working class women. This contrasted with the beliefs of her sisters Adela and Sylvia. Christabel really set the women's suffrage movement aflame when she and Annie Kenney interrupted a Liberal Party meeting in Manchester by shouting out loud the question, 'Will the Liberal goverment give votes to women?' They were promised that the question would be answered at the end of the meeting, and when it was not, they resumed their heckling. The women were roughly thrown out of the hall, with Christabel allegedly 'spitting' at a policeman (which she later denied). This was new, bold behaviour ? at least for a middle class woman ? and it captured the attention of the national press. Christabel spent seven days in prison. When the WSPU moved from its base in Manchester to London in 1906, Christabel became its chief organiser. At this time, she began to go after support from wealthier, middle class women, whom she saw as better serving the financial and political interests of the WSPU's fight to get the vote ? rather than the working class women it had relied upon to start with (see Minnie Baldock). Christabel was arrested again in 1907, leading a deputation to the House of Commons, and was sentenced to two weeks in prison and, in 1908, for ten weeks for inciting a 'rush' on the House of Commons. She cleverly used her time in court as a platform to criticise the goverment. Christabel also evaded the government's census survey in 1911 as part of a wider suffrage boycott. When some suffragettes were released early after hunger striking, Christabel encouraged all imprisoned suffragettes to do the same so that the government could not keep them in prison. The goverment eventually responded by brutally force-feeding suffragettes instead. As part of the leadership of the WSPU, Christabel was under constant threat of arrest and so, in 1912, she fled to Paris. She believed that she could conduct WSPU actions from there better than if she were captured and imprisoned in England. From Paris, Christabel issued orders for a fiercer style of militancy, involving attacks on public and private property. This caused a split in the WSPU, with central figures Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence forced to leave the WSPU because they disagreed with this plan. The policy of more violent militancy was considered a poor one by many, and Christabel was accused of being out of touch with what was going on in England. Overall, Christabel had been a brilliant strategist. She had raised the profile and popularity of the WSPU and of the votes for women cause, but did she now go too far? Christabel has also been criticised for encouraging others to continue the hunger strike policy (even when forcible feeding was introduced), which was damaging to women's health, while she was living safely in Paris. Was this unfair? When war broke out in 1914, Christabel and the WSPU ceased to campaign for votes for women and turned to helping the goverment with the war effort instead. There is a memorial to her at the base of her mother Emmeline Pankhurst's statue near the House of Commons. Christabel's autobiography, Unshackled, was published after her death in 1959.

Other Suffrage Activities: During the First World War, Christabel oversaw the WSPU's production, through its new newspaper Britannia, of anti-German propaganda, and relaunched the WSPU as the Women's Party. She stood for election in Smethwick in the West Midlands in 1918 but was narrowly defeated. Afterwards, she emigrated to America.