Media and Militancy: propaganda in the Women's Social and Political Union's campaign

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The integrated and sophisticated nature of the Women's Social and Political Union's (WSPU) propaganda campaign – which included newspapers, pamphlets, posters and merchandise – is often overlooked in suffrage histories. This article traces the development of propaganda by the WSPU within the context of the organisation's changing militancy, to position propaganda as one of the major elements of the WSPU's campaign. The interaction between these two central campaign strands – militancy and propaganda – is a focus of the article. Militancy is shown to have both facilitated and necessitated the development of the organisation's propaganda, but the WSPU's intensified militancy after 1912 is shown to have hampered the continued evolution of propaganda.