Women's Social and Political Union

In one of her first major public appearances with the WSPU , DM spoke, along with leaders of the movement, at the group's rally at Heaton Park in Manchester, to mark Woman's Sunday.

DM resigned from the WSPU in January 1911, having become strongly dissatisfied with its comparatively autocratic structure and narrow focus on the the vote. She was not the only activist to form such a judgment:...

DM was arrested for the first time when she was one of a WSPU deputation to Parliament . She was jailed for one month at Holloway Prison and her experience garnered much media attention.

Marsden's first major collaborator was Mary Gawthorpe . The two began their friendship in about 1906 and had since frequently shared personal and professional concerns, including possible courses of action in the feminist movement.

DM officially resigned from her position as a WSPU organizer and began a comparatively independent exploration of feminist issues.

DM reserved some of her harshest and most frequent criticism for suffrage groups, particularly the WSPU . She attacked the Union from the journal's first issue forward, for what she saw as a gap its...

DM published the first of her many articles in the WSPU journal Votes for Women. In this piece she covered a Union rally attended by about 50,000 in Huddersfield.

As editor Marsden received informal letters and formal reviews that showed appreciation for the journal's attempt at provocative, comprehensive coverage of pressing socio-political issues. But The Freewoman also aroused controversy and negative response. For instance...

Mary Gawthorpe resigned her co-editorship of The Freewoman after DM published there her explicit attack on the WSPU , A Militant Psychology. Gawthorpe had disagreed with Marsden's position for some time.

Rebecca West wrote on The Freewoman in a 1926 issue of the feminist weekly Time and Tide. She disagreed with Marsden's campaign against the WSPU as well as with her later philosophical turns, while...

That autumn, against the wishes of both her father and her husband, she joined the WSPU , organising a local branch at Newport, South Wales. She paid her one-shilling annual membership fee and pledged...

She was released on bail and fined £10, in addition to £10 in court costs—but she refused to pay. She was sentenced to a month's imprisonment at a jail in Usk, where she went...

In 1909, during the height of her involvement with the WSPU , Margaret Haig Mackworth (later MHVR ) began publishing articles in praise of militancy in the Western Mail.

CLtook the plunge, not only of joining the WSPU , but also of volunteering to be one of the next deputation to the Prime Minister (Herbert Henry Asquith ), which would in all...

The Women's Social and Political Union put CL on its payroll as a paid organizer at two pounds a week plus expenses, making the appointment retrospective to the beginning of the year.