"Words not Deeds"

When war broke out the suffragettes suspended their militant campaign for the vote and devoted themselves to winning the war for Britain. A minority, like Sylvia Pankhurst, opposed the war. She argued that women should only support a government which they have been able to vote for. The war, she said, should only be supported once they had won the right to vote.

The majority, like Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, believed that the war provided women with a chance to show how useful they could be to the country. In July 1915 the suffragettes organised a march of 60,000 women called the 'Right to Serve' procession in which they demanded a bigger role for women in the war effort 'to show the government that women are ready'.

Neil Demarco: Britain and the Great War; Oxford University Press, 1992/2000, page 40