How women won the right to vote in the United Kingdom

2018 marked 100 years since the first women over the age of 30, who owned property, were allowed to vote in the United Kingdom. But the fight for the vote was about more than the Pankhurst family or Emily Davison’s fateful collision with the king’s horse.

In Suffragettes: How Women Won the Right to Vote, popular historian Lucy Worsley tells the story of a group of less well known, but equally astonishing, young working-class suffragettes who decided to go against every rule and expectation that Edwardian society had about them.

Lucy and her group of suffragettes from the Women’s Social Political Union reveal how women got the vote through their brave, trailblazing and often dangerous activities. Lucy looks at the role of politics, police and parliament in the partial enfranchisement of women in 1918, followed by the coalition of groups who successfully achieved the vote for all women over 21 some ten years later.

Suffragettes: How Women Won the Right to Vote broadcasts Thursday March 19 at 9pm (two episodes will run back-to-back) on WITF.  This program is not available via WITF Passport or through the PBS Video App.