My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck By Lightning

dreigroschenoper:

stcelestine:

Rotha Lintorn-Orman, 1885-1935

Founder of the first British movement to call itself fascist. She founded the British Fascisti in 1923, inspired by Mussolini’s March on Rome the year before. It was notable for its high percentage of female members, women street patrols, and frequent violent engagements with Communists. It was eventually surpassed by Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in 1932.

Feminism: not ignoring or shunning women whose opinions you detest.

Other prominent suffragists that later became Fascists include: Mary Richardson, Norah Elam, and Mary Sophia Allen.

Wikipedia entry for British Union of Fascists:

Relationship with the Suffragettes
In a January 2010 BBC documentary, Mother Was A Blackshirt, James Maw reported on how in 1914 Norah Elam was placed in a Holloway prison cell with Emmeline Pankhurst for her involvement with the Suffragette movement, yet in 1940 she returned to the same prison with Diana Mosley, but this time for her involvement with the fascist movement. Another leading suffragette, Mary Richardson, became head of the women’s section of the BUF.
The report described how Elam’s fascist philosophy grew from her suffragette experiences, how the British fascist movement became largely driven by women, how they targeted young women from an early age, how the first British fascist movement was founded by a woman, and how the leading lights of the Suffragettes had, with Oswald Mosley, founded the BUF.
Mosley’s electoral strategy had been to prepare for the election after 1935, and in 1936 he announced a list of BUF candidates for that election, with Elam nominated to stand for Northampton. Mosley accompanied Elam to Northampton to introduce her to her electorate at a meeting in the Town Hall. At that meeting Mosley announced that “He was glad indeed to have the opportunity of introducing the first candidate, and it killed for all time the suggestion that National Socialism proposed putting British women back into the home, this is simply not true. Mrs Elam, he went on, had fought in the past for women’s suffrage … and was a great example of the emancipation of women in Britain”.

fyeah-history:

Suffragette Surveillance, 1913
In 1912, Scotland Yard detectives bought their first camera, to covertly photograph suffragettes. The pictures were compiled into ID sheets for officers on the ground.

Hardened criminals engaged in revolutionary activities.

edwardianpromenade:

The sweets stall at The Women’s Exhibition, Prince’s Skating Rink, May 1909. The Women’s Exhibition, was organised by the Women’s Social and Political Union primarily as a fund-raising event. Over fifty stalls, decorated in purple, white and green displayed a variety of items for sale that had been donated or made by suffragettes. Alongside the suffragettes running the sweets stall, can be seen Emmeline Pankhurst, to the right of the image. At the top a partial view of the murals designed by Sylvia Pankhurst that decorated the walls of the hall. ©Museum of London

savevsdeath:

Arrest of a suffragette, London, 1913

If only they had arrested more.

fyeahfascism:

Richardson’s most famous act of defiance occurred in March 10, 1914 when she entered the National Gallery in London and slashed the Rokeby Venus with a chopper she smuggled into the gallery.

She wrote a brief statement explaining her actions to the WSPU which was immediately printed by the press:

“I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas. Mrs Pankhurst seeks to procure justice for womanhood, and for this she is being slowly murdered by a Government of Iscariot politicians. If there is an outcry against my deed, let every one remember that such an outcry is an hypocrisy so long as they allow the destruction of Mrs Pankhurst and other beautiful living women, and that until the public cease to countenance human destruction the stones cast against me for the destruction of this picture are each an evidence against them of artistic as well as moral and political humbug and hypocrisy.”

Richardson like a number of middle- and upper-class suffragettes turned to fascism. She became the head of the Women’s section of the BUF. Two other prominent suffragette leaders to gain high office in the BUF were Norah Elam and Commander Mary Allen.

runawayrose:

1917. Picket line in front of the White House for women’s suffrage.