Campaigner’s equality rallying cry: ‘Courage calls to courage everywhere’

Millicent Fawcett was a leading suffragist and instrumental in securing votes for women in 1918.

Born in the seaside town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, in 1847, she was sent to a London boarding school and took an interest in women’s suffrage aged 19 after hearing a speech by radical MP John Stuart Mill. He was an early advocate of universal women’s suffrage, and Millicent became actively involved in his campaign. Her sister, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, faced a huge struggle to become the first female doctor in the UK and this fight spurred on Fawcett in her campaign for female equality.

She married Henry Fawcett, a politician and professor of political economy at Camgranting bridge, in 1867 and made her first speech on women’s suffrage in 1868.

She became a well-known activist and speaker before becoming president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1897. This group joined various suffrage factions, including Emmeline Pankhurst’s suffragette movement.

Fawcett was an advocate for peaceful protest, using nonviolent demonstrations and petitions to MPS. She believed that by demonstrating that women were intelligent, lawabiding citizens then they would be seen to be responsible enough to participate fully in politics.

In 1913, suffragette Emily Wilding Davison – who had previously been arrested and jailed several times for her actions – ran onto the track at Epsom during the Derby and was killed by King George V’s horse during a bid to draw attention to the plight of women in the UK. Shortly afterwards, Fawcett made a speech in which the line “courage calls to courage everywhere” was said.

The phrase is on the banner which Fawcett is holding on the bronze statue in Parliament Square.

In 1918, the Representation of the People act was passed, voting rights to some women in the UK.

To qualify, you had to be over 30 years old and hold £5 of property, or have a husband who did.

In 1928, voting rights were extended to all women over 21, in line with men, and an 81-year-old Fawcett watched on in the public gallery in the House of Commons as the bill was passed.

She died one year later.