How the Vote Was Won

The play’s author, Cicely Hamilton, wrote the words to Ethel Smyth’s “March of the Women,” which Smyth dedicated to the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) of the UK. It soon became not just their official anthem, but also one of the women’s suffrage campaign in the UK and beyond. Suffragettes and their allies sang it at rallies and in prison while participating in hunger strikes. The January 1911 edition of the WSPU’s newspaper, Votes for Women, declared it “at once a hymn and a call to battle.” “Raise your eyes to a wider morrow” indeed!

Sources:

Bennett, Jory (1987). Crichton, Ronald (ed.). The Memoirs of Ethel Smyth: Abridged and Introduced by Ronald Crichton, with a list of works by Jory Bennett. Harmondsworth: Viking. ISBN 0-670-80655-2.

Crawford, Elizabeth (2001). The Women’s Suffrage Movement: a Reference Guide, 1866–1928. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-23926-5.