Did smashing windows win British women the vote?

Not on its own, and historians are much more sceptical about it than the public, according to historian Harold Smith. Women won the vote in the United Kingdom through acts of Parliament in 1918 and 1928, and the group remembered for smashing windows was only one strand of the campaign.

There were two strands. The suffragists of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, founded in 1897 by Millicent Fawcett, linked local groups and pressed MPs by peaceful methods. The suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union broke away from that much larger, peaceful and longer-lasting group. By 1903 women in Britain still had no vote, and Emmeline Pankhurst decided women had to \"do the work ourselves\"; the WSPU motto became \"deeds, not words\". Its tactics included shouting down speakers, hunger strikes, stone-throwing, window-smashing, and arson of unoccupied churches and country houses.

Did it work? Historians generally argue that the first stage of militancy, from 1906, had a dramatic mobilising effect on the movement. But Martin Pugh says militancy clearly damaged the cause, and Smith concludes that it is generally agreed the WSPU revitalised the campaign at first, but that its escalation after 1912 impeded reform.

Then came the war. A serious shortage of able-bodied men let women take on many traditionally male roles, and some historians believe the franchise was partly granted in 1918 because the hostility caused by pre-war militancy had declined. The 1918 act gave the vote to women over 30 who were householders, wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of \u00a35, or university graduates: about 8.4 million women. In 1928 the vote was equalised for everyone over 21.