SUFFRAGETTES who were given criminal records in their battle for equality would be pardoned under Labour, Jeremy Corbyn has pledged.
The Opposition leader said an official apology for the miscarriages of justice and persecution the campaigners suffered would also be made if he took power.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd has said she will look at calls to pardon suffragettes but suggested it would be a complicated to carry out.
And some have suggested that pardoning the suffragettes would take away from what they achieved through their radical actions.
Labour is launching a 12-month campaign to celebrate women’s suffrage and to look at what steps can be taken to end the “grotesque levels of inequality” in society as well as the gender pay gap.
The party held its shadow cabinet meeting at the Museum of London, which is holding a year-long exhibition to mark the first women securing the right to vote in Britain.
Mr Corbyn told his top team: “As a country, we must recognise and honour the enormous contribution and sacrifice made by women who campaigned for the right to vote.
“Many of those women were treated appallingly by society and the state. Convictions of suffragettes were politically motivated and bore no relation to the acts committed.
“Some were severely mistreated and force-fed in prison post-conviction so a pardon could mean something to their families.”
He added: “Labour in government will both pardon the suffragettes and give an official apology for the miscarriages of justice and wider persecution they suffered.”
Mr Corbyn said the reforms secured in 1918 were not gifted by MPs.
“Change did not come from above, it was won by the suffragettes who forced the government to act.”
The Representation of the People Act was passed on 6 February 1918 and gave women aged over 30 and “of property” the right to vote.
However, full rights for all women to have the vote were not in place until 1928.
Amber Rudd stressed it was “complicated” when looking at cases of arson and violence, but promised to analyse individual proposals for pardoning.
Ms Rudd said Turing’s Law, which pardoned thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences, had set a precedent.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I have seen this campaign, I completely understand where it’s coming from, the extraordinary pained campaign, violence that these women went through in order to deliver the vote, which has been of such benefit to us for generations.
“So I will take a look at it, but I must be frank, it is complicated because if you’re going to give a legal pardon for things like arson and violence it’s not as straightforward as people think it might be, but I will certainly look at proposals.”
She added: “I think there is something different about them but I’m just pointing out, unfortunately, the practical reality of bypassing the law in this way, but as I said, I would like to take a look at individual proposals to see what can be done.”
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has joined others in pushing for pardons, saying the suffragettes were simply righting the wrong of voting inequality.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, she said: “Voting was a value judgment, not an intrinsic right.
“That inequality is one of the reasons why I support calls by family members to offer a posthumous pardon to those suffragettes charged with righting that wrong.”
Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, named after suffragist Millicent Fawcett, said: “Suffragette activism was for a noble cause and many of them became political prisoners.
“It would be a fitting tribute to pardon them now.
“They made such sacrifices so that we could all enjoy the rights we have today.
“In any meaningful sense of the word, they were not criminals.”
A pardon is defined as “the remitting or forgiving of a crime”, according to Stroud’s Judicial Dictionary.
The dictionary also says a pardon is “a remission of guilt: an amnesty is oblivion”, meaning that a pardon forgives the crime and excuses the penalty, but it does not expunge guilt for the offence.
If someone is convicted of theft and jailed, for example, and then given a royal pardon, they will be freed from prison but will still have been convicted of the offence.
But Stroud’s also says that a “free pardon” both forgives the offence and removes the guilt and conviction.
While suffragists used peaceful methods to achieve women’s suffrage, the suffragettes employed more militant tactics in their campaign.
There were more than 1,300 suffragette arrests according to the England, Suffragettes Arrested, 1906-1914 collection.
Many went on to be jailed, including leader Emmeline Pankhurst.
As a founder member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), Pankhurst was sentenced to repeated stretches in prison as a result of her militant activity.
While many back the pardoning of suffragettes, concerns have been raised that doing so could ‘whitewash’ their radical actions that forced change to happen.
Writer Caroline Criado Perez took to Twitter to explain why she felt they should not be pardoned.
She wrote: “The suffragettes were not unwitting victims. They deliberately broke the law to make a point.
“‘No taxation without representation,’ for example. They were refusing to pay taxes while their voices could not be heard. That was a deliberate point and a deliberate choice.
“Pardoning them now whitewashes their radicalism — and that is wrong. They *were* radical. They did break the law. They did so knowingly. They celebrated their war wounded with badges and pins and sashes.
“Pardoning the suffragettes now is easy. It’s a pain-free way to make the government look pro-women and progressive. But this government is not pro-women and progressive.”
https://twitter.com/CCriadoPerez/status/960791328513757184?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
The leader of the Green Party in England and Wales, Caroline Lucas, said: “Pardoning suffragettes now is nice gesture, but I worry it erases their radicalism.
“They took direct action, they broke the law, because their cause couldn’t be won by petitions & letters alone. Remember them as rule breakers & don’t allow their radical actions to be forgotten.”
What is a pardon and what would it mean for the suffragettes?
A pardon is defined as “the remitting or forgiving of a crime”, according to Stroud’s Judicial Dictionary.
The sixth edition of the dictionary also says a pardon is “a remission of guilt: an amnesty is oblivion”, meaning that a pardon forgives the crime and excuses the penalty, but it does not expunge guilt for the offence.
If someone is convicted of theft and jailed, for example, but then given a royal pardon, they will be freed from prison but will still have been convicted of the offence.
But Stroud’s also says that a “free pardon” both forgives the offence and removes the guilt and conviction.
According to this definition, it seems that it would be necessary for the Queen to issue a free pardon in order to exonerate the suffragettes of all blame for their actions.
It would seem free pardons have the effect of establishing innocence and overturning a conviction, as opposed to pardons which forgive the conviction but do not overturn it.
Press Association legal editor Mike Dodd said: “There does appear to be a difference between a pardon and a free pardon.
“The free pardon not merely forgives but forgets. It wipes out the fact of the conviction.
“Free pardons for suffragettes would be more tokenism than anything else.
“It is now widely acknowledged that those women were treated appallingly and subjected to serious injustice, and made to suffer ghastly cruelty while in prison.
“Granting free pardons now might look good, but will change nothing of what happened more than a century ago.
“We know they suffered for what they believed in and what was right, and that I think is the greater benefit, and the lesson of history.
“We cannot re-write the past, much as we would like to do so.”
Enjoy the convenience of having The Sunday Post delivered as a digital ePaper straight to your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Subscribe for only £5.49 a month and enjoy all the benefits of the printed paper as a digital replica.
Subscribe