The politics of women's suffrage : local, national and international dimensions / edited by Alexandra Hughes-Johnson and Lyndsey Jenkins.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. Working within existing political structures -- 1. The ‘success of every great movement had been largely due to the free and continuous exercise of the right to petition’: Irish suffrage petitioners and parliamentarians in the nineteenth century -- 2. Singing ‘The Red Flag’ for suffrage: class, feminism and local politics in the Canning Town branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1906–7 -- 3. Suffrage organizers, grassroots activism and the campaign in Wales -- 4. Suffrage, infant welfare and women’s politics in Walsall, 1910–39 -- 5. ‘Keep your eyes on us because there is no more napping’: the wartime suffrage campaigns of the Suffragettes of the WSPU and the Independent WSPU -- II. Working through social and cultural structures -- 6. English girls’ schools and women’s suffrage -- 7. ‘A mistake to raise any controversial question at the present time’: the careful relationship of Glasgow’s suffragists with the press, 1902–18 -- 8. ‘The weakest link’: suffrage writing, class interests and the isolated woman of leisure -- 9. Militancy in the marital sphere: sex strikes, marriage strikes and birth strikes as militant suffrage tactics, 1911–14 -- III. Navigating international structures -- 10. ‘East Side Londoners’: Sylvia Pankhurst’s lecture tours of North America and the East London Federation of Suffragettes -- 11. Suffrage internationalism in practice: Dora Montefiore and the lessons of Finnish women’s enfranchisement -- 12. Emotions and empire in suffrage and anti-suffrage politics: Britain, Ireland and Australia in the early twentieth century -- 13. From Votes for Women to world revolution: British and Irish suffragettes and international communism, 1919–39

From 1832 to the present day, from the countryside in Wales to the Comintern in Moscow, from America to Finland and Ireland to Australia, from the girls' school to the stage, women's suffrage was the most significant challenge to the constitution since 1832, seeking not only to settle demands for inclusion and justice but to expand and redefine definitions of citizenship. This collection advances ongoing debates within suffrage history whilst also drawing on a range of new sources, different intellectual techniques and methodological approaches, which challenge established interpretations. With its focus on politics and political activism in its broadest sense, this collection makes a timely and substantial contribution to understanding the meaning of politics and political activism across the UK (and indeed, across the world) in this period, particularly as defined and experienced by women at the grassroots. This collection is a reminder of the ways in which women have often encountered and battled a hostile political climate, but pushed forward with determination, skill, tenacity and optimism: resonating with the renewed interest in women's history and feminist politics today