The Suffragettes did more Harm than Good
Uploaded by makemequeen on Jun 04, 2007
Throughout their campaigning, the Suffragettes had not yet caused any real damage to anyone or anything until after November 1910 when Black Friday happened. After being banned from Liberal meetings, hundreds of women went out to protest outside Parliament to support the Conciliation Bill, except instead of a peaceful demonstration, the women had been sexually and physically abused by policemen before being sent home with multiple bruises and bodily harm or being arrested. However, can this be justifiable enough a reason for these women to gather together and agree to do harm to get their points across, and in the end, did it really help their cause?
By looking from one point of view, you can see that through their demonstrations that they were able to bring their cause to the front pages of newspapers, and by doing so more and more people became aware of not only their existence, but what they were trying to do not only to the people, but also to the Government that in the past had never truly taken their beliefs into account as even significant. Thanks to the increase of awareness, the thought of women getting the vote was bound to be approved sooner or later because too many people had learnt about this and had been placed in a situation that concerned this to just let it go away after such a difficult struggle to let women get what they wanted. There is also the case that people had gotten used to women fighting both vocally and physically for their rights for what they felt they had every right to have that they no longer found it so strange for something like this to occur. One could even argue that it wasn’t even relevant that the Suffragettes had gotten violent seeing that whether they were to fight back or not, Asquith would still be strongly against women having the vote and would continue to support the Government with their harsh treatment towards women.
Yet, another point of view on the matter can be that the Suffragettes did indeed cause so much distress not only to the Government but also to the people that they could not be proclaimed as rightfully fighting for what they wanted and were just hurting people to get their own way. Thanks to their violence, they could be seen as actually giving the...