Black Friday (1910)

Black Friday was a suffragette demonstration in London on 18 November 1910, in which 300 women marched to the Houses of Parliament as part of their campaign to secure voting rights for women. The day earned its name from the violence meted out to protesters, some of it sexual, by the Metropolitan Police and male bystanders.

During the January 1910 general election campaign, H. H. Asquith—the Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party—promised to introduce a Conciliation Bill to allow a measure of women's suffrage in national elections. When he was returned to power, a committee made up of pro-women's suffrage MPs from several political parties was formed; they proposed legislation that would have added a million women to the franchise. The suffrage movement supported the legislation. Although MPs backed the bill and passed its first and second readings, Asquith refused to grant it further parliamentary time. On 18 November 1910, following a breakdown in relations between the House of Commons and House of Lords over that year's budget, Asquith called another general election and said that parliament would be dissolved on 28 November.

The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) saw the move as a betrayal and organised a protest march to parliament from Caxton Hall in Westminster. Lines of police and crowds of male bystanders met three hundred female protestors outside the Houses of Parliament; the women were attacked for the next six hours. Many women complained about the sexual nature of the assaults, which included having their breasts twisted and pinched. Police arrested four men and 115 women, although the following day all charges were dropped. The conciliation committee were angered by the accounts, and undertook interviews with 135 demonstrators, nearly all of whom described acts of violence against the women; 29 of the statements included details of sexual assault. Calls for a public inquiry were rejected by Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary.

The violence may have caused the subsequent deaths of two suffragettes. The demonstration led to a change in approach: many members of the WSPU were unwilling to risk similar violence, so they resumed their previous forms of direct action—such as stone-throwing and window-breaking—which afforded time to escape. The police also changed their tactics; during future demonstrations they tried not to arrest too soon or too late.