Suffragette Fascists: Emmeline Pankhurst & Her Right-Wing Followers

This book examines Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Women's Social and Political Union, and her followers' connection to the rise of fascism in the 1930s. While Pankhurst is widely remembered today as a champion of democracy, some prominent former suffragettes in the 1930s compared her to Hitler and Mussolini. The WSPU has been characterized as a proto-fascist movement—a claim that may seem extreme to modern readers, yet the organization shared significant characteristics with fascist parties that emerged after World War I. The WSPU was backed by wealthy aristocratic donors and employed terrorism through bombing and arson against working-class people. The organization also exhibited anti-Semitism and an ambivalent stance toward democracy. The book reveals lesser-known facts: Pankhurst advocated for ethnic cleansing and concentration camps, and her daughter was imprisoned during World War II for pro-Nazi activities. These details illuminate why former suffragettes came to hold prominent positions in Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists before the Second World War, given the ideological and structural similarities between Mosley's party and Pankhurst's WSPU.