Suffragette fascists : Emmeline Pankhurst and her right-wing followers / Simon Webb.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Webb, Simon, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Suffragists--England--Biography.

Suffragists.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (214 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, UK : Pen & Sword Books Limited, [2020]

Summary:

A look at the leader and members of the militant Women's Social and Political Union and their contribution to the rise of fascism during the 1930s. Emmeline Pankhurst is seen today as a valiant champion of democracy, but in the 1930s certain prominent former suffragettes were comparing her to Hitler and Mussolini. It was suggested that Mrs. Pankhurst and her Women's Social and Political Union could be viewed as a proto-fascist movement; an idea likely to strike the modern reader as grotesque. Yet the WSPU certainly had much in common with the fascist parties that emerged after the end of the First World War. The group was financed by wealthy and aristocratic backers, and terrorism, in the form of bombing and arson, was widely used against working-class men and women. This, together with the rampant anti-Semitism and ambivalent attitude to democracy, all indicate that there was more to the suffragettes than we now realize. Few people today, for example, know that Emmeline Pankhurst was an advocate of ethnic cleansing and the use of concentration camps, nor that her daughter was imprisoned during the Second World War for pro-Nazi activities. This helps to explain how former suffragettes came to hold such important positions in the British Union of Fascists in the years before the Second World War. After all, the ideology and structure of Oswald Mosley's fascist party was so eerily similar to that of Emmeline Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union. "Fascinating... The book looks into the new leaders of the WSPU, their thoughts, attitudes and beliefs, the blackshirts, before the war, during and after." - UK Historian

Contents:

Cover

Book title

Copyright

Table of contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction

Chapter 1 Who Were the Suffragettes?

Chapter 2 The Cult of the Leader and theRejection of Democracy

Chapter 3 The Suffragettes' War on theWorking Class

Chapter 4 Vivisection, Sweated Labour andthe 'Social Evil'

Plate section

Chapter 5 1914: The Suffragettes Tacklethe Enemy Within

Chapter 6 Concentration Camps andEthnic Cleansing

Chapter 7 After the War

Chapter 8 The Blackshirts as Natural Successorsto the Suffragettes

Chapter 9 The Second World War

Appendix: Five Women

Bibliography

Index

Back cover.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781526756893

1526756897

OCLC:

1157974246