SOUTHPORT suffragettes had established themselves as determined political activists under Dora Marsden, but their attention-grabbing revolutionary tactics prompted a community backlash.

With the visiting Churchill interrupted, eggs thrown in the street and a serious threat to the pier, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) had increased their profile sufficiently to occupy a prominent Nevill Street office and attract bumper crowds to their talks.
But for many the potential for a domestic and political earthquake if they achieved their aim, and a sense of distaste about what was deemed to be ‘unfeminine’ tactics, meant the WSPU’s opponents soon turned the tables on the group.
The line was crossed initially in 1910, when WSPU flags were ripped from a car the ladies were using to reach a polling booth in what became known as the ‘High Park Incident’.
The Visiter reported a crowd of more than 100 gathered as the vehicle was damaged and the chauffeur threatened, while one suffragette was shoved against a door and another was “bodily lifted� and thrown headfirst into the backseat.
The unrest continued at a WSPU meeting that took place in Marshside’s Temperance Hall.

As Dora Marsden spoke, proceedings were interrupted by a rowdy crowd around the gas meter who kept turning the lights out.
Another antagonist released a basket of sparrows in the room, and one youth persisted in shaking a rattle while others sang, according to the Visiter, “well known music hall songs regardless of harmony or tune�.
A vote was taken by Miss Marsden and it was determined that she should continue with her talk regardless of the interruptions.
The following evening, a more serious incident occurred as the former teacher and her colleagues delivered a speech at the now defunct Wennington Road school.
This time the meeting was interrupted by somebody releasing noxious chemicals into the packed hall.
But despite this resistance Dora Marsden and her fellow travellers didn’t give up their cause, it was more that the genteel and conservative Southport of the day gave up on them.

By 1913, it was reported that the WSPU no longer had a significant foothold in our town, and groups more concerned with lobbying politicians and peaceful resistance gathered greater followings.
Dora Marsden slipped out of Southport as quietly as she had arrived and the Visiter revealed in 1911 that she had joined forces with Mary Gawthorpe to establish a magazine called Free Woman, covering women’s issues as well as continuing to agitate for suffrage and accepting articles from literary giants like TS Elliot and DH Lawrence.

Women in the UK finally achieved suffrage on the same terms as men in 1928.
Dora Marsden died in 1960, after spending the final 25 years of her life in a home for the psychologically ill near Dumfries, Scotland.

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