Buying Votes: purchasable propaganda in the twentieth-century women's suffrage movement

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Abstract

This thesis offers a comparative assessment of the mass-produced, purchasable propaganda originating from the three largest votes-for-women campaign organisations in the years before the First World War. Discussing the development of the suffrage movement’s newspapers, occasional literature, merchandise, posters, postcards, and cartoons, and the shops through which this propaganda was sold, this thesis explores the internal campaign factors and external influences that shaped the propaganda campaigns.

The militant Women’s Social & Political Union (WSPU) is shown to have been the leading innovator in mass-produced propaganda, developing commercially-modelled propaganda and means of distribution. The WSPU utilised woman’s perceived role as consumer, commodifying its propaganda to involve women in the movement through acts of purchase. The smaller militant organisation, the Women’s Freedom League, made some effort to commercialise its propaganda campaigns along similar lines, but its efforts were more restricted, partly owing to its more limited resources. The law-abiding National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, by contrast, largely eschewed commercialism and popular appeal
in favour of more sober forms of propaganda.

The reasons behind the WSPU’s innovation are shown to be multitudinous. The WSPU benefited from an autocratic leadership that could swiftly implement new forms of propaganda, and its campaign gained from the specific contributions of leadership figures Fred and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence. Ultimately, though, the WSPU’s militancy is shown to have been the strongest influence on the organisation’s commercialised propaganda campaign: the WSPU’s controversial protest activities demanded mainstream-style, mass-circulated propaganda – including newspapers, merchandise, and illustrations – that challenged negative perceptions of militant suffragettes.