“And I’d have got away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those pesky feminists!”, or so Caroline Criado Perez imagined Sir Neil Thorne saying this week. Thorne is the former Conservative MP who attempted this summer to move the Grade 2 listed statue of Mrs Pankhurst from its present location in front of Parliament, to an obscure corner in the grounds of a private university in Regent’s Park.

In August the author and suffrage historian Elizabeth Crawford used her informative ‘Woman and sphere’ blog to draw attention to plans to dismantle the statue. Even though the online petitions protesting against it had raised thousands of signatures, Crawford explained that Westminster city council was under no obligation to take notice of them, but it did have to pay attention to complaints made to them via their planning applications procedure.

Thanks to the efforts of Crawford and Criado Perez, who helped to publicize the campaign, in less than a month Westminster city council received 896 comments on the proposed move, of which 887 were objections (including mine). It was slightly more time-consuming than clicking on an online petition, but it seems to have done the trick, as last week it was announced that the proposals have been withdrawn.

Mary Martin Ward (Newnham Hall 1876-1879), photograph reproduced with kind permission of Newnham College Cambridge

Last year the ODNB asked me to write an entry on one of Cambridge’s longest serving ‘pesky feminists’, the Irish suffragist Mary Ward (1851-1933). I knew that she was one of the original members of the Cambridge Women’s Suffrage Association in the 1880s, so I turned to Crawford’s landmark reference work, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide to find out more. That led me to the Cambridgeshire Archives and to the archives at Newnham College (where she was a star student) and finally to the Women’s Library at the L.S.E., to consult the papers of Olwen Ward Campbell (Ward’s daughter).

My blog about Mary Ward is here, but I have been thinking about her again this week because on October 4^th I’m giving a talk about her suffrage work at the Museum of Cambridge. It’s part of events supporting the  ‘At Last! Votes For Women’ exhibition that has come fresh from the LSE, and runs until 11 November. With sashes, badges and documents telling the story of the fight for equal voting rights, the campaign methods of the three main groups for women’s suffrage in the years 1908-14 are explored.

The WSPU headed by Mrs Pankhurst believed in ‘deeds not words’, and the militant actions by its members made headlines in 1913. Mary Ward, then 62, belonged to the much larger NUWSS which condemned violence and believed that the vote would be won using the ‘peaceful and constitutional methods’ it had been deploying for almost fifty years. Ward may have disagreed with the tactics of the suffragettes, but in 1913 she co-signed a letter to the Cambridge Daily News protesting against the continuing focus of ‘the sensational Press’ on the militant actions of the WSPU, and she resigned her membership of the Liberal Party in protest against the government’s treatment of militant suffrage prisoners.

That summer of 1913 saw the Great Pilgrimage, a six-week march by the many thousands of suffragists who believed in non-violent protest from all over England and Wales to Hyde Park in London (the author Jane Robinson wrote about it in her excellent recent book, Hearts and Minds). Mary Ward was one of the leaders of the Cambridge suffragists, ‘marching through unfriendly crowds from Barnwell junction to Midsummer Common’, as Crawford puts it, before setting off for London.

You might say that Ward believed in deeds and words – a stinging letter, a well-timed resignation, walking with her head high through hostile crowds to make a point about women’s rights. It’s good to know that even today words (and emails sent to the correct authority) can make things happen too. But we have to make sure we don’t assume, as feminists today, that the fight has been won by women like Mary Ward and Mrs Pankhurst, and we can let our guard down. As Elizabeth Crawford wrote last week:

‘The proposals to remove Mrs Pankhurst’s statue and re-erect it in the grounds of Regent’s University have just been WITHDRAWN… However, we would be wise not to be too complacent…this may be some kind of tactical move. Be vigilant.’

More words from me (spoken this time) at the Museum of Cambridge on October 4^th. I hope you can come.

Sources: H.M. Lawson Dodd and others, ‘Mrs James Ward (Mary Jane Martin), Newnham Hall 1876-1879’ Newnham College Roll Newsletter, January 1934, pp. 38-47; ‘Ward, Mrs Mary’ (1851-1933) in E. Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 (1999); ‘A Petticoat Pilgrimage’ Cambridge Daily News (21 July 1913); Cambridgeshire Archives CWSA Papers 1884 –1919. With thanks to Newnham College for permission to use the photograph of Mary Ward.