Mud March (Suffragists)

Mud March was the name given, after the event, to the first large procession organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) on 7 February 1907.[1] More than 3,000 women trudged through the wet, cold and muddy streets of London from Hyde Park to Exeter Hall to advocate for women's suffrage.[2]

Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the NUWSS and one of the leaders of the march, said of the elements: "The London weather did its worst against us; mud, mud, mud, was its prominent feature, and it was known among us afterwards as the 'mud march.'" Despite the conditions, the march was described as: "A gay enough procession by most accounts, despite the weather. Little touches of red and white splashed its length with rosettes and favours, posies bound with red and white handkerchiefs programmes, and above the line, white banners with vivid scarlet lettering."[3]

The march was attended by "titled women, university women, artists, members of women's clubs, temperance advocates, and women textile workers gathered from all parts of the country."[4] More than forty organisations were represented at the march.[5] One description of the march declared, "'[there were] plenty of well-dressed ladies and a few persons of distinction' to head it up and 'a long line of carriages and motor-cars to wind it up–altogether an imposing and representative array.'"[6]

Key people and organisational distinctions

Phillipa (Pippa) Strachey, daughter of Lady Strachey one of the leaders of the procession, organised the march.[4] The Mud March demonstrated Strachey's skill as an "organizing genius" and led to the planning of many more processions.[7] Strachey was described as the "indefatigable organizer, [the] competent, [and] imaginative" woman who was responsible for the meticulous planning of all future large processions of the NUWSS.[7] Members of the Artists' Suffrage League produced posters and postcards and designed and produced around 80 embroidered banners for the march.[8]

Millicent Fawcett, co-led the march with fellow "constitutionalist" suffragists Lady Strachey, Lady Frances Balfour, and Keir Hardie.[6] The constitutionalist suffragists, of which the NUWSS was comprised, were "committed by definition to non-militant activity," whereas the "suffragettes," of which the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was comprised, employed militant tactics of protest.[9]

Purpose

Constitutionalists such as Fawcett did not condone the militant tactics of the suffragettes but recognized they needed to be visible and vocal in society to be successful in their cause. One historical scholar suggests that the march demonstrated that the NUWSS "[came to] believe that only the mass demonstration could provide evidence—through its scale[—] that large numbers of women wanted to vote, and through its administration and design that the community at large would gain."[10]

Some time after the march, Fawcett stated, "We, the old stagers, adopted new methods, one of the most successful of which was the organisation of public processions in the streets."[4]

Public reaction

Despite the poor weather conditions, thousands of spectators lined the route. The sight of women of all ages, classes, and professions marching side by side—in horrendous weather through muddied streets—was a novelty worth withstanding the elements to witness.[6] Newspapers and magazines in Europe and in the United States fixated on the diversity represented in the march.[11]

The idea that women had a general distaste for "public display" in British society at this time made the participants appear even more dedicated in the eyes of the spectators.[12] As the Manchester Guardian noted: "Nobody can suppose that most of the women who took part [in the march]…can have done so for sport or for the pleasure of the thing…it requires some courage for a woman to step out of her drawing room into the street to take her place in a mixed throng for a cause probably distasteful to many or most of her acquaintances, and to see herself pilloried in the newspaper the next morning by name as one of the 'Suffragists.'"[13]

At its conclusion, one participant was quoted as saying, "We had done what had seemed to so many the ridiculous thing, and the crowd, by taking us seriously, had robbed it of its absurdity."[14]

Scholarly insights on long-term effects

Leaders of the suffragist movement, contemporary historians and scholars consider the march to have helped solidify large suffrage processions as a key feature of the British movement.[4]

Deborah Gardener, of the Yale University Press and the New-York Historical Society, cites the Mud March as the first significant, large suffragist procession in England and underlines the positive effect such events had on the image of suffragists in the public eye:

The suffrage marches drew thousands of participants, starting with the three thousand in February 1907—the ‘Mud March’—and ending with forty thousand at the last in 1913, but more important they drew vast crowds (hundreds of thousands) and concomitant press coverage. Both the constitutionalists and the militants understood the value of such reportage in conveying the message ‘that all sorts and conditions of women wanted the vote, and that women who wanted the vote were not as they popularly conceived to be in the public mind or as caricatured in the illustrated press’…the suffragist movement’s capture of the image of ‘womanly’ women, in contrast to popular images of ‘shrieking’ or hysterical women.[15]

In The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907–14, author Lisa Tickner recognises, as did Gardener, its long-term significance: "The Mud March, modest and uncertain as it was by subsequent standards, established the precedent of large-scale processions, carefully ordered and publicized."[16] Tickner also observes that the "social mix" represented in the procession was a foretaste of the effect the suffrage movement would have on the interaction between classes in society.[6]

In her book Connecting Links: The British and American Suffrage Movements, 1900–1914, Patricia Harrison suggests that the NUWSS was able to emulate the enthusiasm and resolve of the militants while remaining loyal to the constitutional suffrage movement’s commitment to non-militant tactics by organising processions and demonstrations like the Mud March.[4]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Patricia Greenwood Harrison, Connecting Links: The British and American Woman Suffrage Movements, 1900–1914 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000), 63.
  2. ↑ Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great Movement (London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1912), 86.
  3. ↑ Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907–14, New Ed. edition (London: University of Chicago Press, 1988) 75.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Harrison, 63.
  5. ↑ Tickner,75.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Tickner, 75.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Harrison, 64.
  8. ↑ Historic England, "The former studio of the Artists' Suffrage League (1520606 )", PastScape, retrieved 24 February 2015
  9. ↑ Harrison, 48.
  10. ↑ Tickner, 80.
  11. ↑ Tickner, 75–76
  12. ↑ Tickner, 78
  13. ↑ Tickner, 75
  14. ↑ Tickner, 74
  15. ↑ Deborah S. Gardener, "Review of The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907–14" by Lisa Tickner, The Art Bulletin 71, no.4 (December 1989):702.
  16. ↑ Tickner, 78.

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