The United Procession of Women, or Mud March as it became known, was a peaceful demonstration in London on 9 February 1907 organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), in which more than three thousand women marched from Hyde Park Corner to the Strand in support of women's suffrage. Women from all classes participated in the largest public demonstration supporting women's suffrage seen up to that date. It acquired the name "Mud March" from the day's weather; incessant heavy rain left the marchers drenched and mud-spattered.
The proponents of women's suffrage were divided between those, known as suffragists, who favoured constitutional methods and those who supported direct action, who became known as suffragettes; the NUWSS were constitutional suffragists. The split between the two factions was formalised in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, who formed the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). This organisation held demonstrations, heckled politicians and, from 1905, saw several of its members imprisoned for their increasingly militant actions, which gained press attention and increased support from women. To maintain that momentum and to create support for a new suffrage bill in the House of Commons, the NUWSS and other groups organised the Mud March to coincide with the opening of Parliament. The event attracted much public interest and broadly sympathetic press coverage, but when the bill was presented the following month, it was "talked out" without a vote.
While the march failed to influence the immediate parliamentary process, it had a considerable impact on public awareness and on the movement's future tactics. Large peaceful public demonstrations, never previously attempted, became standard features of the suffrage campaign; on 21 June 1908 up to half a million people attended Women's Sunday, a WSPU rally in Hyde Park. The marches showed that the fight for women's suffrage had the support of women in every stratum of society, who despite their social differences were able to unite and work together for a common cause.
Background
In October 1897 Millicent Fawcett was the driving force behind the formation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), an umbrella organisation for all the factions and regional societies, liaising with sympathetic MPs. Initially, seventeen groups affiliated with the body. The organisation became the leading body following a constitutional path to women's suffrage. In October 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel formed a women-only group in Manchester, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Although the NUWSS sought its objectives through constitutional means, such as petitions to Parliament, members of the WSPU organised open-air meetings, heckled politicians and chose jail over fines when they were prosecuted. From 1906 the WSPU began to use the nickname "suffragettes", which differentiated it from the constitutionalist "suffragists".
At the time of the Mud March, before the suffragette campaign had developed to damaging property, relations between the WSPU and NUWSS remained cordial. When eleven suffragettes were jailed in October 1906 after a protest in the House of Commons lobby, Fawcett and the NUWSS stood by them. On 27 October 1906, in a letter to The Times, she wrote:
The real responsibility for these sensational methods lies with the politicians, misnamed statesmen, who will not attend to a demand for justice until it is accompanied by some form of violence. Every kind of insult and abuse is hurled at the women who have adopted these methods, especially by the "reptile" press. But I hope the more old-fashioned suffragists will stand by them; and I take this opportunity of staying that in my opinion, far from having injured the movement, they have done more during the last twelve months to bring it within the region of practical politics than we have been able to accomplish in the same number of years., citing
The militant actions of the WSPU raised the profile of the women's suffrage campaign in Britain and the NUWSS wanted to show that they were as committed as the suffragettes to the cause. In January 1906 the Liberal Party, led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, had won an overwhelming general election victory; although before the election many Liberal MPs had promised that the new administration would introduce a women's suffrage bill, once in power, Campbell-Bannerman said that it was "not realistic" to introduce new legislation. A month after the election, the WSPU held a successful London march attended by 300 to 400 women. To show there was support for a suffrage bill, the Central Society for Women's Suffrage suggested, in November 1906, holding a mass procession in London to coincide with the opening of Parliament in February. The NUWSS called on its members to join the march.
March
Organisation
The task of organising the event, scheduled for Saturday, 9 February 1907, was delegated to Pippa Strachey of the Central Society for Women's Suffrage. Her mother, Lady [Jane] Strachey, a friend of Fawcett, was a long-standing suffragist, but Pippa had shown little interest in the issue before a meeting with the educationalist and feminist Emily Davies, who quickly converted her to the cause. She took on the organisation of the London march with no previous similar experience, but carried out the task so effectively that she was given responsibility for the planning of all future large processions of the NUWSS. On 29 January the executive committee of the London Society determined the order of the procession and arranged for advertisements to be placed in the Tribune and The Morning Post.
Regional suffrage societies and other organisations were invited to bring delegations to the march. The art historian Lisa Tickner writes that "all sensibilities and political disagreements had to be soothed" to make sure the various groups would take part. The Women's Cooperative Guild would attend only if certain conditions were met, and the British Women's Temperance Association and Women's Liberal Federation (WLF) would not attend if the WSPU was formally invited. The WLF—a "crucial lever on the Liberal government", according to Tickner—objected to the WSPU's criticism of the government. At the time of the march, ten of the twenty women who sat on the NUWSS executive committee were connected with the Liberal Party. Strachey arranged for some of the men from the Bloomsbury Group to help with the march; several assisted, including her brother—the psychoanalyst James Strachey—and the economist John Maynard Keynes.
The march was scheduled to begin at Hyde Park Corner and progress via Piccadilly to Exeter Hall, a large meeting venue in the Strand. A second open-air meeting was scheduled for Trafalgar Square. Members of the Artists' Suffrage League produced posters and postcards for the march. In all, around forty organisations from all over the country chose to participate.
9 February
On the morning of 9 February, large numbers of women converged on the march's starting point, the statue of Achilles near Hyde Park Corner. Between three and four thousand women were assembled, from all ages and strata of society, in appalling weather with incessant rain; "mud, mud, mud" was the dominant feature of the day, wrote Fawcett. The marchers included Lady Frances Balfour, sister-in-law of Arthur Balfour, the former Conservative prime minister; Rosalind Howard, the Countess of Carlisle, of the Women's Liberal Federation; the poet and trade unionist Eva Gore-Booth; and Emily Davies. In addition to the aristocratic representation, attendees included a large number of professional women—doctors, schoolmistresses, artists—and large contingents of working women from northern and other provincial cities, marching under banners that proclaimed their varied trades: bank-and-bobbin winders, cigar makers, clay-pipe finishers, power-loom weavers and shirt makers.
Although the WSPU was not officially represented, many of its members attended, including Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Annie Kenney, Anne Cobden-Sanderson, Nellie Martel, Edith How-Martyn, Flora Drummond, Charlotte Despard and Gertrude Ansell. It was common for women to be members of both organisations and to attend the events of both and wear the two badges they provided for members.
By around 2:30 pm in pouring rain, the march had formed a column that stretched far down Rotten Row. It was led by Lady Frances Balfour, Millicent Fawcett and Lady Strachey, immediately followed by a brass band. They were followed by carriages and motor cars, many of which carried flags bearing the letters "WS", red-and-white banners and bouquets of red and white flowers. Around 7,000 red-and-white rosettes had been provided for the marchers by the manufacturing company of Maud Arncliffe-Sennett, an actor and leader among the London Society for Women's Suffrage and the Actresses Franchise League. Despite the weather, thousands thronged the pavements; according to the historian Harold Smith they were there to enjoy the novel spectacle of "respectable women marching in the streets".
Contemporary reports differ in their reporting of how the spectators behaved. The Observers reporter recorded that "there was hardly any of the derisive laughter which had greeted former female demonstrations", although The Morning Post reported "scoffs and jeers of enfranchised males who had posted themselves along the line of the route, and appeared to regard the occasion as suitable for the display of crude and vulgar jests"., citing . Katharine Frye, who joined the march at Piccadilly Circus, recorded "not much joking at our expense and no roughness". The Daily Mail—which supported women's suffrage—carried an eyewitness account, "How It Felt", by Constance Smedley of the Lyceum Club. Smedley described a divided reaction from the crowd "that shared by the poorer class of men, namely, bitter resentment at the possibility of women getting any civic privilege they had not got; the other that of amusement at the fact of women wanting any serious thing ... badly enough to face the ordeal of a public demonstration"., citing
Approaching Trafalgar Square the march divided: representatives from the northern industrial towns broke off for an open-air meeting at Nelson's Column, which had been arranged by the Northern Franchise Demonstration Committee. The main march continued to Exeter Hall for a meeting chaired by the Liberal politician Walter McLaren, whose wife, Eva McLaren, was one of the scheduled speakers. Keir Hardie, leader of the Labour Party, told the meeting, to hissing from several Liberal women on the platform, that if women won the vote, it would be thanks to the "suffragettes' fighting brigade". He spoke strongly in favour of the meeting's resolution, which was carried, that women be given the vote on the same basis as men, and demanded a bill in the current parliamentary session. At the Trafalgar Square meeting Eva Gore-Booth referred to the "alienation of the Labour Party through the action of a certain section in the suffrage movement", according to The Observer, and asked the party "not to punish the millions of women workers" because of the actions of a small minority. When Hardie arrived from Exeter Hall, he expressed the hope that "no working man bring discredit on the class to which he belonged by denying to women those political rights which their fathers had won for them".
Aftermath
Press reaction