EMMELINE PANKHURST of the Dinner Party

Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist whose militant tactics assisted the emergence of women’s suffrage in the U.K., through the Women’s Franchise League and the Women’s Social and Political Union, organizations that advocated suffrage for both married and unmarried women. When WFL broke apart, Pankhurst tried to join the leftist Independent Labour Party but was denied due to her sex. The WSPU was supposedly independent, opposing political alliances and preferring physical confrontations, and when WWI began she supported the British government and transformed the WFL machinery into the Women’s Party, which advocated for a strong female public presence. Upon her later years, she perceived Bolshevism as a threat and joined the Conservative Party.