Hackney’s working-class suffragettes

In January 1914, working-class women in East London were told they were no longer welcome in the militant suffragette organisation, the Women’s Social and Political Union. Instead, they created the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) which fought for votes for all women. Inspired by traditions of working-class militancy, they organised mass protests and created a People’s Army to combat police violence. Whilst the organisation’s work in Bow and Poplar are best known, this talk will uncover the extraordinary women and dramatic campaigns they waged in Hackney. Katherine Connelly, a biographer of the ELFS’s charismatic leader Sylvia Pankhurst, will trace the way these militant working-class suffragettes responded to the global upheavals of war and revolution, as well as the ways their radical democratic vision changed Hackney.