Charlotte Despard first joined the Union of Practical Suffragists and later the WSPU but, unhappy with its leadership, founded the Women’s Freedom League (WFL). The WFL, with its green, white, and gold colours and its newspaper The Vote, gained members across the UK.

Committed to women’s suffrage, Despard and the WFL embraced civil disobedience, engaging in protests and vandalism but rejecting violence and arson. Despard supported tax resistance and co-organised the 1911 suffrage census boycott, refusing to complete her own form. Her activism led to two imprisonments in Holloway Prison.

A pacifist throughout her life, Charlotte opposed the First World War, joining anti-war rallies and the Women’s Peace Crusade, in stark contrast to her brother, Sir John French, a British Army commander. After partial enfranchisement in 1918, the WFL continued campaigning until all women gained equal voting rights, remaining influential until 1961.

Image Credit: Charlotte Despard speaking at an anti-fascist rally, Trafalgar Square, 12 June 1933:photograph by James Jarché, Daily Herald Archive.