“If I have faith in a person, no arguments, no persuasion, nothing outside can shake my faith.”
Annie Kenney
The British suffragette movement was often accused of being made up of women drawn from the leisured elite. However, that is not counting in, Annie Kenney, an Olden cotton millworker, and the working women she organized in support of suffrage.
Annie Kenney (1879-1953) was the fifth of eleven children born to a Manchester mill family. A daydreamer and mischief maker, she was not interested in books and school as a child, and she was sent to work at the age of thirteen to help with the family finances.
Until she was twenty, Kenney worked in the mills, losing a finger to the machinery. The first writings that truly moved her were the radical articles of Robert Blatchford in The Clarion. His words propelled her to become active in the labor movements among the mill workers. But it was hearing Christabel Pankhurst speak that totally changed her life.
Over time, Annie Kenney became one of the most active organizers in the WSPU Movement and loyal follower of Christabel Pankhurst. She was jailed and force-fed numerous times, but nothing could keep her down. Sentenced to prison for three years for inciting rioting, she refused water and food and was released over and over under the “Cat and Mouse Law.” Within days, she would be up and in disguise so she could sneak into a suffrage meeting to the delight of the attendees and the frustration of the police and detectives guarding her. Rearrested, she continued the practice over and over.
When World War I started, Annie Kenney was sent to America to work with the American suffragettes. She had minimal funds and didn’t fit in with the white-gloved Newport crowd. So she choose three states at random – Montana, North Dakota, and Nevada to visit and speak in. Her comment on Americans hit the nail on the head.
“I had not been in America a week, before I made a discovery. Do not admit your poverty if you wish to be a success. If you are poor, that is proof positive to Americans that there is something wrong somewhere and that you have failed in some way. Prosperity is their watchword.” (Memories of a Militant. p. 258) Still she was thrilled when Montana and Nevada voted for women’s suffrage and felt her work in those states had had an effect.
The following excerpt is from the same work and shows why she was so successful as an organizer.
The unswerving zeal of the hundreds of thousands of women who laboured in their solitary fields alone and unsupported was one of the hidden causes of the success of the Movement. All women owe a debt of gratitude to those women who worked in silence, suffered in silence, unknown to any save the odd speakers who visited their tiny hamlets or villages. How different was their life as Suffragettes to ours whose lot was cast among the multitude. Such courage as theirs was the cement which bound together the great structure called the Militant Movement. The women who came from the hills of the North Country or some little hamlet of the South to join our deputations and face arrest and imprisonment, returned not to city life where one is lost among many, but to their cottages or to the Manor House, as the case might be. There was no one there to show appreciation of their deed or to bid them welcome. They were met with ridicule and scorn, and yet they continued their work as though the whole village had erected a tablet in their honour. How anxiously did these women await the day when a speaker would visit their part of the country to explain to the villagers the whys and wherefores of the Militant fight.
Once again the old saying proved true; “A prophet is without honour in his own country.”
Movements are built up by silent followers, and few realize the sacrifices they make, the secret buffering they endure, in their effort to be true to a great principle which has stirred their hearts. For the first few years the Militant Movement was more like a religious revival than a political movement. It stirred the emotions, it aroused passions, it awakened the human chord which responds to the battle-call of Freedom. It was a genuine reform for emancipation, led by earnest, unselfish, self-sacrificing women. A cause that works for emancipation must always draw to itself those who feel the need of freedom, and those who consciously feel their position rouse in others the same desire for liberty. The call was universal. All women were appealed to. Class barriers were broken down; political distinctions swept away; religious differences forgotten. All women were as one. The fight was “Women versus Parliament.” The one thing demanded was loyalty to policy and unselfish devotion to the Cause.
The Movement represented the pent-up indignation and tightly suppressed anger or grief of highly individualized women, capable, clever, and learned. Their hearts in many cases had been scarred at the constant barriers that faced them in their walk in life. The life of Queen Elizabeth had been proof to them that women could understand the science of Government. The works and life of the first pioneer of women’s economic independence, Mary Wollstonecraft, had been studied and re-studied by those advanced souls who could find no outlet for their desires and capabilities…
Our forces were united. We were pledged to join no other party or work for any other society, or subscribe to any movement save the Militant Movement. The thought, the energies, the vital force of thousands was kept in one straight channel and concentrated on one thought, and that was “ Votes for Women.” Memories of a Militant pp 298-303
Annie Kenney’s Writings
Memories of a Militant by Annie Kenney 1924
Learn More
Working Class Movement Library: Annie Kenney
“Annie Kenney and the Politics of Class in the Women’s Social and Political Union” by Lyndsey Jenkins, in Twentieth Century British History, 2019.
“Newly Discovered Letter Sheds Light on Overlooked Suffragette” by Bridget Katz, in Smithsonian Magazine, 2018.
“No committee ever has, or ever will, run a revolution.”
Annie Kenney Memories of a Militant 1924