Mass Meeting of Suffragettes

Votes for Women protesters swamp Trafalgar Square, brandishing placards and petitions.

This two-shot newsreel fragment surveys the scene at a Votes for Women protest on Trafalgar Square in the summer of 1910, when suffragists of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies presented petitions signed by supportive menfolk of Britain's towns and cities.

While it's ostensibly a piece of non-partisan film journalism, it's probably no accident that the newsreel company - Pathé Frères - chose to brand these peaceful campaigners 'suffragettes' (a label coined for activists from the more militant Women's Social and Political Union) and so bring a touch of sensationalism to their reporting.