{"id":4435,"date":"2011-03-30T09:00:32","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T08:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=4435"},"modified":"2011-03-30T09:00:32","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T08:00:32","slug":"deeds-not-words-emily-wilding-davison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2011\/03\/30\/deeds-not-words-emily-wilding-davison\/","title":{"rendered":"Deeds Not Words: Emily Wilding Davison"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year, as many of us fill in the census, it’s also 100 years since the 1911 census<\/a>, which women’s suffrage activists saw as another campaigning opportunity.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the best and oddest moments in the Disney canon is the appearance, halfway through Mary Poppins<\/strong>, of an all-singing all-dancing campaign for civil liberties<\/a>. ‘Sister Suffragette’ isn’t without its problems \u2013 the song is half-pisstake, half-pastiche, and the film makes Mrs Banks\u2019 dizzy preoccupation with Votes for Women another instance of parental neglect \u2013 but come on, it\u2019s a subversively fluffy aside that puts a smile on the face, and it\u2019s sometimes the first encounter with that fabulous creature, a suffragette, that people remember having.<\/p>\n

The campaign for women\u2019s suffrage in this country<\/a> is such a great story that I\u2019m surprised it\u2019s never been the subject of its own Disney film. Apart from its narrative of struggle towards a goal undeniably justified in modern eyes, it\u2019s got a whole array of glamorous heroines in petticoats and picture-hats and, eventually \u2013 after the false dawn of the 1918 Representation of the People Act which only included women property-owners aged over thirty \u2013 a happy ending. In particular, the Suffragette<\/a> taste for militantly iconoclastic protest would lend itself to iconic on-screen moments: women chained to the Downing Street railings, smashing windows, occupying civic buildings<\/a>, enduring imprisonment and force-feeding and, not least, Emily Wilding Davison<\/strong>\u2019s much-disputed martyrdom at the social event of the season, which actually was captured on film<\/a> at the time.<\/p>\n