ABSTRACT

This chapter covers a number of factual and fictitious screen portrayals of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the large flamboyant women’s organization formed to secure the parliamentary vote for British women in the early twentieth century. As a determinedly modern body, the WSPU made good use of the developing cinema industry to spread its message. At the same time, it proved an irresistible subject for early filmmakers, especially in satire or comedy. The chapter explores contemporaneous representations of suffragettes on screen, then looks at later portrayals. It suggests that the tensions between how the movement wished to portray itself and how it was portrayed continued beyond the campaign and continue to make suffrage a contested subject for filmmakers in the present day.