Britain may be proud of its role as one of the world’s oldest democracies, but it’s only in the last 70 years that the Mother of Parliaments has had true democracy at all.
For hundreds of years, the working man, the poor and those without property were denied a vote. Gradually, mainly thanks to the Reform Acts of the late 1800s, the franchise spread to every man over the age of 21.
But a bigger fight remained – one that was finally won 70 years ago when women over the age of 21 secured the vote.
It was a battle marked by violence, imprisonment and legalised torture – and it was fought largely in the streets, meeting houses and organised protests of the East End.
It is hard now to imagine the shock that suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurt caused in 1912 when she stood outside the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) shop in Bow Road and painted “Votes for Women” in letters of gold on the front.
She had begun her work at the start of the suffragette movement in her home town of Manchester in 1905. With sister Christabel and mother Emmeline, she was soon one of its leading lights.
She got to know the famed East End politician George Lansbury, who resigned his seat as MP for Bow and Poplar, and stood on a platform of suffrage for women.
He was defeated, and did not return to Parliament until 1922, but threw his weight enthusiastically behind Sylvia’s setting-up of a WSPU branch, at 198 Bow Road.
Sylvia had quickly moved beyond the aim of universal suffrage to encouraging working women to complain about unequal pay, the inadequacy of health care for their children and poverty.
“I regarded the rousing of the East End as of utmost importance,” she argued. “The creation of a women’s movement in that great abyss of poverty would be a rallying cry to the rise of similar movements in all parts of the country.”
It led to a split with the other Pankhursts, who were interested in representation, not revolution.
The London movement grew in militancy. In 1913, Sylvia and other members were arrested after marching to confront Lloyd George. Imprisoned, she went on hunger strike, and had to undergo the brutal practice of being force-fed.
Released from Holloway in March 1914, Sylvia was back on the campaign trail a week later when she joined a procession from Bow to Westminster Abbey. Too feeble to walk, she was pulled in a carriage.
The protests went on. On 24 May, she was arrested at a May Day celebration in Victoria Park. A month later, the still feeble Pankhurst lay on the steps of Parliament, refusing to move until an obviously shaken Prime Minister agreed to meet a delegation of East End women.
But one of her greatest moments came with the founding of a toy factory and day nursery in Bow.
It provided toys and clothes at reasonable prices, the workers were paid above the going rate, and mothers could leave their children for just 3d a day – Pankhurst had set up one of the East End’s first creches.
Controversy was never far away. Her growing support for Communism drove many away and in 1927, she scandalised the country by refusing to name the father of her baby.
But just a year later, all her work came to fruition when the franchise was extended to woman over the age of 21.
And if Sylvia seemed physically broken by her hunger strikes, victory had its own rewards. She recovered and lived to a robust 88, passing away in 1960.
Further reading: In Letters of Gold, Rosemary Taylor, Stepney Books 1993.