The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) lead by Emmeline Pankhurst (labelled the Suffragettes as a term of derision by The Daily Mail newspaper) campaigned for property-owning women to have the vote from 1903 to 1917.
The nascent Labour Party and other Socialists didn’t want more votes for the bourgeoisie and therefore opposed the WSPU which became more militant. Historians postulate that the militancy of the suffragettes hindered the universal suffrage of women in the United Kingdom although they certainly kept the issue in the public view.
Suffrage was given to property-owning women in 1918, following the First World War, and to all women over the age of 21 in 1928.
