My outlook on life and politics changed a lot when I learned that outside competition and inside pressure, such as from the USSR and the Suffragettes respectively, is the only reason women got the handful of rights that they now have, and then seeing the same pattern with every other issue.
There is so much stupidity about this. The Suffragettes' violent campaign was relished by those who opposed women's suffrage. Some climate deniers enjoy JSO protests too.
We need the global north to become impassioned about the climate crisis. Making change means sacrifices too, just like those made by those who wore out their shoes walking during the bus boycott, the suffragettes on hunger strikes, the farmworkers who went on strike, and all prisoners of conscience.
On X I, and a people with more followers, have compared Just Stop Oil protestors to suffragettes. A lot of response has suggested that people think the suffragettes wrote letters and delivered petitions. Oh, and that horse thing. The ignorance is astonishing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrag...
In 1983, 50,000 British women staged a peaceful protest against storing US nuclear cruise missiles at Greenham Common in Berkshire. While the missiles did eventually arrive, further protests led to their removal by 1991. This was the largest women's protest since the suffragettes.
The suffragettes are often used (poorly) to justify bad behaviour by activists. Although it's true that suffragette protests were more memorable than that of the broader suffragist movement, it's not obvious to me that they were more influential? www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-4...
Unfortunately one of the most effective campaigns the Tories have succeeded in is making the public think protest shouldn't inconvenience anyone As for popularity the Suffragettes were not & were far more hard arsed than Just Stop Oil. Sadly doing what's right isn't always going to make you popular.
There is one critical distinction in that they have vowed to remain non violent -UK suffragettes essentially invented the letter bomb and were also famous for arson. People did not like them! And yet it’s indisputable that their attacks on art and other disruptions got press and furthered the cause
Seeing dozens of snarky comments about how Just Stop Oil should Respect Art and throw soup on BP and begging y’all to read just one book on their clear inspiration (and perhaps the most successful UK protest movement of all time - the suffragettes www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022