Sunday 13 April 2014

Suffragette bombers

The aim of this blog will be to explore the terrorism undertaken by the members of the Women's Social and Political Union; led by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. These women became known after 1906 as 'suffragettes' and it is sometimes forgotten that they carried out a large number of bombings across the whole of the United Kingdom. There were simply too many of these to provide a full list, but among the most notable were the explosions caused at Westminster Abbey in 1914, the bombing of Christ Church Cathedral in Ireland that same year, the attack on the Kibble Palace in Glasgow's botanic gardens and the attempts at mass-murder by planting bombs at reservoirs and blowing up canals to cause flooding. Over the next few days, I shall be looking at one or two of the more serious incidents of this kind. In the meantime, it is worth reflecting on the fact that the first terrorist bombings in Ireland of the twentieth century were carried out not by Irish nationalists, such as the IRA, but by agents of the Women's Social and Political Union.

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