Annie Kenney was an English working class suffragette who became a leading figure in the Women’s Social and Political Union.
Kenney started work at the age of 10 in a local cotton mill in Yorkshire. She was a cotton frame tenter and her duties were to crawl on her hands and knees under the machine sweeping the cotton while the machine was running, not long after she started work a whirling bobbin tore off one of her fingers. At 13 she worked part time and at 17 she was promoted to the position of “big tenter”. Kenney conducted a literary campaign among her workmates, handing out Socialist newspapers every week as well as works of poetry, literature and art.
Kenney and her sister, Jessie attended an Independent Labour Party meeting in 1905 where they heard Christabel Pankhurst speak on women’s rights. Kenney became friends with Pankhurst and joined the recently formed Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). In October the same year Kenney and Pankhurst attended a Liberal rally at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. They asked Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey ‘If you are elected, will you do your best to make women’s suffrage a government measure?’ but received no response. The women unfurled a ‘Votes for Women’ banner and were promptly thrown out. They were arrested and charged with assault of the policemen who claimed they’d kicked them. Neither women had the money to pay their fines and were sent to Strangeways prison. It was the first of 13 times Kenney was sent to prison.
The WSPU had been thought of as a middle class endeavour and when they opened a branch in the East End Kenney was asked to leave the mill and become a full-time worker for the organisation. She was tasked with recruiting working-class women to join the WSPU. In 1907 she was appointed the organiser for the South-West and was based in Bristol. She frequently stayed at the home of fellow suffragette Mary Blathwayt and there were rumours that the two women had a romantic relationship.
In February 1907 the “Women’s Parliament” passed a resolution condemning the omission of women’s suffrage from the King’s Speech. A procession of around 400 women marched towards the Houses of Parliament, despite warnings from the police that they would continue no further than Westminster Abbey. 51 women were arrested, 15 of them had reached the lobby of Parliament. In October that year the paper ‘Votes for Women’ was launched to the call of “Votes for Women, price one penny, articles by Annie Kenney.” Annie’s political activism, speeches and arrests are well documented in ‘Votes for Women’.
In 1912 Christabel Pankhurst fled to Paris to avoid arrest and Annie Kenney was put in charge of the WSPU in London. Kenney commuted to Paris every week to discuss policy and tactics with Pankhurst. They began a campaign to destroy the contents of pillar-boxes, destroying over 5,000 letters. Under Pankhurst’s orders members of the WSPU attempted to burn down the houses of two members of the government who opposed women having the vote.
In 1913 Kenney was charged with “incitement to riot”, she was sentenced to 18 months in Maidstone Prison and immediately went on hunger strike. She was the first suffragette to be released under the Cat and Mouse Act, which allowed for temporary discharge for those who were in ill health. Kenney went into hiding but was caught and returned to prison, until her ill health bought her another reprieve and she escaped to France to join Pankhurst.
In 1917 the question of granting women the right to vote was finally discussed in Parliament, in 1918 the Representation of the People Act 1918 gave the vote to women over the age of 30 who were householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5, and graduates of British universities.
Kenney withdrew from political life after 1918 and married James Taylor in 1920, settling in the south of England. She had long-term health problems caused by her hunger-strikes while imprisoned. Kenney’s memoirs of her life as a suffragette were published in 1924.