I’ve been asked so often what the difference was between a suffragette and a suffragist that I usually give a brief explanation in my talks to the effect that before 1906 anyone who campaigned for the vote was called a suffragist. After 1906 the term “suffragette” came into being: it was coined by a Daily Mail journalist to describe members of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union founded by Mrs Pankhurst in 1903. So a suffragette was a militant and a suffragist was a non-militant. That the campaigners themselves perceived the distinction is suggested by circumstances such as the militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) renaming their newspaper “ The Suffragette ” (in 1912). Meanwhile, the non-militant National Union Women of Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) proudly displayed a banner at its events proclaiming that they were “law-abiding suffragists”. In reality the situation was more complicated than that. The term “suffragist” continued to be used to mean s...

Reginald McKenna, the man who introduced the infamous “Cat and Mouse Act”, was Home Secretary from 1911 to 1915. Born into a Catholic family in London, he later converted to Protestantism. He studied at Cambridge University, in 1887 became a barrister, and in 1895 he was elected Liberal MP for North Monmouthshire. McKenna was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1908, and from there moved to take up the post of Home Secretary. The appointment pitched him into the forefront of the Liberal government’s battle with the militant suffragettes. Over the next few years he was engaged in a rancorous struggle with them for the moral high ground, a struggle which already seemed lost when he took up the post. The appointment pitched him into the forefront of the Liberal government’s battle with the militant suffragettes. Over the next few years he was engaged in a rancorous struggle with them for the moral high ground, a struggle which already seemed lost when he took up the p...