From Suffragette to Homesteader by Emily van der Meulen

Author:Emily van der Meulen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fernwood Publishing
Published: 2018-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

4

Locating Race in Suffrage

Discourses and Encounters with Race and Empire in the British Suffrage Movement

Sumita Mukherjee

While there is a well-developed body of literature that examines various facets of British suffrage, relatively little scholarship has focused on race and the early women’s campaign, especially with regard to discourses of empire and imperialism. This chapter examines these little-known histories and discusses how race and racialized discourses featured in the British suffrage movement during the years when Ethel Sentance was involved. As an active campaigner in the early twentieth century, before she emigrated to Canada in 1912, Ethel would have undoubtedly encountered racialized men and women in her day-to-day life, both inside and outside the movement. And, while not discussed in her memoir, British suffrage campaigns and spokeswomen were engaging in many ways with issues relating to race and empire. When reflecting on Ethel’s involvement with the fight for enfranchisement and gender equality, therefore, it is important to think about how she too was (or was not) engaging with debates about class and racial equality. In order to do so, this chapter first introduces some of the key racialized women involved in British suffrage, most notably Sophia Duleep Singh, and then examines the ways in which issues of race and imperialism were discussed by non-racialized campaigners, primarily within conservative suffrage publications. As the British movement was inspired by and inspired other suffrage movements globally, it is necessary to also consider how these debates were connected to the activities of women in other parts of the world, particularly fellow British subjects across the empire (see Fletcher, Mayhall, and Levine 2000).

Women of Colour in the British Suffrage Movement

In the early twentieth century, Britain was home to women of colour from India, China, and colonies such as those in the Caribbean. At the time, the suffrage movement did not do enough to engage the racially diverse British community in their activities and debates, and thus the historical record includes only a few traces of racialized men and women who were involved in the movement, though there may be others who have yet to be identified. The most notable women of colour involved in British suffrage was Sophia Duleep Singh, a princess by title (Anand 2015). Of mixed Indian, German, and Abyssinian heritage, Singh was born in Norfolk, on England’s eastern coast, in 1876. She was goddaughter to Queen Victoria, as her father was the deposed, exiled prince of the Punjab in India, the last maharaja of the Sikh empire. She participated in the November 18, 1910, “Black Friday” protest which led to police assault and media condemnation of the government (discussed in more detail by June Purvis in Chapter 3) and was a prominent member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, an organization which argued that if the government was not obliged to give women the vote, then women were not obliged to pay taxes to that same government. In May 1911, Duleep Singh’s refusal to pay licence fees for her five dogs, a carriage, and servant led to a fine of £3 (equivalent to roughly £350, or $600 Canadian, in today’s currency).

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