emmeline (emily) pankhurst was one of the founders of the british suffragette movement. Pankhurst was born a Victorian Englishwoman, but she shaped an idea of women for the modern time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back.

Let down first by the Liberals and then by the labour Party, both of which she had supported in turn, she was already politically disillusioned by 1903 when she and her daughter Christabel Pankhurst formed the non-party Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Manchester. this union was extremely well organized, and was run like a volunteer army. The members were prepared to use any means to gain the vote for woman. By using militant measures, they soon became famous and, in 1906, were nicknamed 'suffragettes' by the daily mail Newspaper. The word 'suffragettes' was first used as an insult to make fun of their unladylike behaviour, but the suffragettes were proud of the title and the name has stuck ever since.they became engaged in the first act of physical aggression in the struggle for the vote at the hands of Liberal Party supporters during a meeting in Manchester in 1905. Sir Edward Grey had expounded on the intentions of the Government about to be formed and at question time Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney asked what its intentions were over votes for women. Grey ignored them (he had answered all other questions but thought this one not 'a fitting subject'). All they received was jeers and catcalls. A steward came and asked them to put it in writing, which they did. It got passed onto Sir Edward who only smiled. The meeting was drawn to a close, people started to leave. In desperation Annie stood on her chair and cried, "Will the Liberal Government give woman the vote?". They were seized, kicked down the gallery stairs, then thrown bodily from the hall, suffering physical injury. Outside they held a protest meeting, were arrested for obstruction and, upon refusal to pay their fine, sent to prison, the first of many prision sentences to be served by suffragettes in england. This episode was given world-wide newspaper coverage: it also provoked a wave of bitter violence from the frustrated WSPU Party whose motto became 'Deeds not Words'.

In 1906 they moved to london and started a deliberate policy of sensationalism. They chained themselves to the railings of the Prime Minister's residence, harangued the terrace of Parliament from the river, broke windows, and one woman, Emily Davidson threw herself in front of the King's racehorse in the 1913 Derby and was killed. Women in prison went on hunger strike and were forcibly fed.pankhursts autobiography, 'My Own Story', was published in 1914, having achieved the majority of her goals: the right to vote for women in the United Kingdom.according to nicky wire, emily is about "the idea that an icon of pankhursts standing who really tried to do something good, who got women's sufferage and got women the vote, can be replaced by someone as obviously empty as Princess Diana as a feminist icon. I spit in the mud to be honest, the fact that Princess Diana is seen as a feminist icon for doing absolutely nothing and just the idea of once again not learning from history, how someone as important as Emily Pankhurst has been off the critical radar. So it's just that comparison really of the culture we're in today, it just seems so much easier just to become an ambassador for Unicef for 6 months and you're seen as some kind of icon; it just seems pretty daft."