THE SUFFRAGETTE VIEW

Raeburn's narrative history of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and the indomitable Pankhursts, who instigated and exhorted the legions of embattled women, is woven around the wonderful gallery of portraits and photographs of the Valkyries in action. Raeburn gently suggests that the vote, once women got it, did little to relieve female oppression, but the politics of confrontation, direct action and spectacular visibility which these activists invented was to persist. Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia get much of the footage here and the camera shows them not as hysterics but as remarkably poised, attractive and intelligent women. But Raeburn shows the whole panoply of WSPU heroines, their marches, demonstrations, hunger strikes, banners and combat gear. Today's feminists seem tame by comparison.