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BBC Radio 4 - Radio 4 in Four, What did the suffragettes do for you?

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Scarlett Moffatt tells the story of women's suffrage.

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This display forms part of the national commemorations marking the centenary of the 1918 Act that gave some women the right to vote for the first time. Dedicated to those who campaigned tirelessly for over 50 years to achieve votes for women, the exhibition features iconic objects from the Museum's vast Suffragette collection, including Emmeline Pankhurst's hunger strike medal. At the heart of the display is a powerful, newly commissioned film that reflects on the contemporary relevance of the militant campaign that continues to inspire, shock and divide opinion.

Groups of 10 or more are asked to book their free visit in advance.

Join the conversation #VotesforWomen

Gallery access

Capital Concerns gallery

10am - 5.50pm

Accessible via a lift

Gallery on the lower ground floor

Votes for Women also of interest

Shades of Militancy: the forgotten Suffragettes

Who were the women who fought for the right to vote?

Celebrating female suffrage

How and why are we marking a century of votes for women?

London on wheels: a suffrage story

Join us for a bus tour exploring key sites and stories from the women's suffrage movement.

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Votes for Women exhibition | Museum of London

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This display forms part of the national commemorations marking the centenary of the 1918 Act that gave some women the right to vote for the first time. Dedicated to those who campaigned tirelessly for over 50 years to achieve votes for women, the exhibition features iconic objects from the Museum's vast Suffragette collection, including Emmeline Pankhurst's hunger strike medal.

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How the suffragettes vandalised the Rokeby Venus painting in the National Gallery

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A Radio 4 documentary broadcast on 13 March 2014 about how Mary Richardson vandalised the Rokeby Venus painting in the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, 100 years ago this week. Mary Richardson was a militant suffragette.

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A century ago, British women still did not have the vote and violent protests by the suffragettes were escalating. Were these women seen at the time as something akin to terrorists, or as activists legitimately fighting for a political cause?

Frustrated by the lack of reform at the start of the 20th Century, hundreds of suffragettes were jailed after taking part in protests.

Until 1912 the campaigning was largely within the law, mainly chaining themselves to railings and disturbing the peace. But activism grew to include planting bombs, smashing shop windows and acts of arson.

Targets were not just buildings, even artworks were mutilated - most notably Velazquez's famous Rokeby Venus, repeatedly slashed with a meat cleaver at the National Gallery in 1914.

There had been earlier concerns. In 1909, the government had been concerned about a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. The perceived threat came from an unidentified "little woman" picketing the House of Commons and "wearing a Tam o' Shanter", according to a file only released in 2006 by the National Archives in Kew.

The government's concern was heightened when it was informed that two women had been observed practicing with revolvers at a shooting range.

But the period after 1912 marked a clear escalation.

How suffragettes were described

April 1913: Times newspaper - "militant movement of the Women's Social and Political Union..."

June 1914: Home secretary Reginald McKenna - "these women are so foolish and mischievous"

Also McKenna: "What is thought is that the indignity of being sent to Broadmoor as criminal lunatics would bring them to their senses"

In 1913, Emily Davison threw herself in front of the King's horse at the Derby and died from her injuries. Historian Sir Brian Harrison thinks she was probably seeking martyrdom - as later Irish militants did.

"A funeral is a great opportunity for publicity. The militants made the most of the publicity resulting from that death," he says.

But "terrorism" is far too strong a word for the actions of the suffragettes, considering the context, says Baroness Brenda Dean.

"If you look at any major social change, within it somewhere has been a degree of militancy... You've got to throw yourself back to the turn of the century when the whole social order was very different."

Their actions have to be seen through the prism of their inability to use normal means to advocate their views, she suggests.

"These were pretty desperate measures by people in a desperate situation."

Baroness Dean is calling on the government to give a posthumous apology for the way the suffragettes were treated.

Krista Cowman, a professor of women's studies at the University of Lincoln, says the suffragettes would have been considered terrorists at the time but not in the same way people would view terrorists today.

"The key difference you have to remember, unlike today's terrorist act, where acts are being committed by people who do have a vote, who are enfranchised, these women were completely outside the system but asked to work within it."

It was natural that the establishment would fear the suffragettes.

"Because there were many other political issues at that time, such as the Irish militancy, it makes it more dangerous. If you can't contain your own women, particularly middle class women who have traditionally been a quieter group, then you really are losing a grip on everything," she adds.

Lloyd George's failure

My great-great-grandfather David Lloyd George had always supported women getting the vote when in opposition, but didn't make much of it when in power.

Votes for women was too difficult to swing and he cared about it less than his welfare reforms - it was a useful Conservative-bashing tool when in opposition but too controversial once he was in power.
Dan Snow, presenter, The Lost World of the Suffragettes
However, Prof June Purvis, who wrote a biography of Emmeline Pankhurst, disagrees, and says that there is a great difference between lawlessness and being labelled a terrorist.

Purvis says the Liberal government tortured women by force feeding them when they were on hunger strike and perpetrated other indignities.

"It wasn't just forcible feeding. On Black Friday, 18 November 1910, women were kicked to the ground, punched, their breasts were pinched."

Helen Moyes - who died in 1979 - belonged to the non-militant arm of the suffrage movement, known as the "suffragists". She objected to the militant tactics employed by Christabel Pankhurst, a daughter of the movement's leader Emmeline.

"I saw no value or use of militancy in a cause. I told her that and said 'you use argument and reason in a cause, not militancy'," she told historian Sir Brian Harrison, who interviewed 180 people in the 1970s as part of his research on the suffragette movement.

Key dates for women's suffrage

1867: MP John Stuart Mill supports equality for women in the Second Reform Act, but is defeated

1903: The Women's Social and Political party, later referred to as the suffragettes, holds its first meeting

1918: Representation of the People's Act allows women over 30 to vote

1928: Women over 21 get the vote

Listen to women describing their role in the suffrage movement
Independent newspapers, later banned by the government, clever photo journalism and mass protests all brought the cause for women's rights to the public eye.

Dressmaker Elsie Flint, a suffragette who was part of the militant arm, recalled in the 1970s: "People laugh and say what ridiculous things to do, but it was never done for fun. They had to get the notice of the public and that was their way of doing it."

On the afternoon of 1 March 1912 around 150 women were standing in front of shop windows and government offices in London's West End and simultaneously took hammers and stones from their pockets and smashed the windows, explains historian Elizabeth Crawford.

"There was great confusion, they didn't try to run away. They were arrested immediately."

One of the suffragettes, Victoria Lidiard, recalled the attack in the 1970s: "We started at the Marble Arch and... were stationed right down from Marble Arch to Tottenham Court Road - and then bang went all the windows."

An estimated 124 women were arrested. After the window smashing episode, the police used weapons and force to close down the Women's Social and Political Union.

A year later, arson attacks were commonplace. One such attack greatly damaged an unfinished house being built for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd-George, who had become a hate figure for the suffragettes.

Find out more

The Lost World of the Suffragettes will be broadcast on Saturday 11 February at 20:00 GMT on BBC Radio 4

Catch up later via the iPlayer

The Suffragette-defaced penny Jenni Murray on being a 20th Century woman
Dr Tobias Feakin of the Royal United Services Institute compares the suffragettes to a protest campaign like the Occupy movement against economic inequality, but says today they would not be perceived as terrorists.

"Animal rights activists have used more extreme measures to express themselves, though in the US they do ban a lot of environmental groups as environmental terrorists."

Crawford says she "can't help but sympathise" with the suffragettes, but believes their methods were "a rather dangerous way of going about things".

"We tend to underestimate the amount of damage that was done. At the time they wouldn't have used the term terrorism, but with our experience of terrorism now, if one group is trying to coerce the state, I think we might view it rather differently."

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Were extreme suffragettes regarded as terrorists?

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A century ago, British women still did not have the vote and violent protests by the suffragettes were escalating. Were these women seen at the time as something akin to terrorists, or as activists legitimately fighting for a political cause?

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The Suffragettes for KS1 and KS2 children | The Suffragettes homework help | TheSchoolRun

Who were the Suffragettes?

The word ' suffrage ' means having the right to vote in political elections. The Suffragettes campaigned for women to have this right.

In Britain the organisation was led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

After peaceful methods of campaigning had failed to bring about any result, the movement became more violent. Women householders over the age of thirty finally gained the vote in 1918.

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Who were the Suffragettes? The word 'suffrage' means having the right to vote in political elections. The Suffragettes campaigned for women to have this right. In Britain the organisation was led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

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Suffragettes: what was the Cat and Mouse Act?

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In the early days of feminism, women known as suffragists demanded the right to vote through peaceful protests, but by 1903, it was clear that the peaceful path wasn't working. Emmeline Pankhurst led the Suffragettes into a new wave of violent, militant action, declaring, "No measure worth having has been won in any other way."

Today, we wrongly apply the Suffragette label to everyone in the suffrage movement, both peaceful and violent, but the Suffragettes were not peaceful women, politely waiting for men to give their rights. They were violent. They were vicious. They were domestic terrorists who lived up to their motto: "deeds, not words."

10Trying To Assassinate The Prime Minister

On July 19, 1912, a group of Suffragettes nearly killed the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, a key opponent of the Suffragettes, was visiting Dublin. He was traveling by carriage with the Irish politician John Redmond when suddenly a hatchet flew toward him. It landed directly between the two, grazing Redmond's ear, only a few inches away from killing him. On it were written the words: "This symbol of the extinction of the Liberal Party for evermore."

The woman who threw it was Mary Leigh, and she was only getting started. She managed to escape in the commotion and, with a few friends, made it to the Theatre Royal, where the prime minister was scheduled to speak.

Leigh and her friends poured a combustible oil on the theater's projector and set it on fire. Some men saw it burning and rushed in to put it out, but as they did, an explosive went off in the audience. When they turned to the sound, they saw Leigh's co-conspirator, Glady Evans, blocking the door out of the protecting room. She had a lit match in her hand-and she threw it onto the oil around those who trying to calm the flames.

The girls were arrested, and the fire was stopped. As she was dragged off, though, Glady Evans swore that there would be more explosions to come. "This," she promised, "is only the start of it."

9Bombing A Chancellor's Cottage

The Suffragettes had an active campaign of actively destroying property. They set letter boxes on fire, smashed shop windows, cut telephone wires, and burned buildings to the ground. They targeted buildings dominated by men. Golf courses that forbade women, in particular, would be dug up, with slogans graffitied across the greens and buildings set aflame.

They nearly killed 12 men when they bombed a cottage that belonged to politician Lloyd George. George was an outspoken advocate of women's rights-but the Suffragettes didn't feel like he was doing enough. "He is always betraying us!" one Suffragette complained. She justified bombing his cottage, saying she believed it would "wake him up."

Two bombs were concealed in his cupboards, set to explode at a time when they thought the house would be empty. The Suffragettes, though, didn't realize workers were coming in that day. By a miracle, the second bomb didn't go off, but if it had, the men would have been killed.

The arsonists were never caught, but Emmeline Pankhurst took the credit for organizing the attack. "For all that has been done in the past I accept responsibility," she told the courts, before being sentenced to prison. "I have advised, I have incited, I have conspired."

8Vandalizing Famous Pieces Of Art

After Pankhurst was arrested, a woman named Mary Richardson went into the National Art Gallery, walked up Diego Velazquez's Rokeby Venus, and slashed it to pieces with a meat cleaver.

"I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst," she declared, "who is the most beautiful character in modern history."

Richardson's attack inspired other Suffragettes. Another woman, Mary Wood took a meat cleaver of her own to a painting of Henry James, crying out, "Votes for women!" while she hacked at it. Another woman put a blade in a portrait of the Duke of Wellington, and another cut up Lausen's Primavera.

Their biggest hit, though, was the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey, where kings were crowned. A woman smuggled a bomb loaded with iron nuts in a small black bag and placed it nearby, hidden under a feather boa. It went off, blowing off a piece of the chair.

"I wish to show the public that they have no security for their property nor for their art treasures," one of the vandals explained when asked why she'd done it, "until women are given the political freedom!"

7Hunger Strikes

When Emmeline Pankhurst was sent to prison, she immediately staged a hunger strike. This was a common Suffragette strategy. Marion Wallace Dunlop had staged one of the first in 1909, and it had worked. After three days of starving herself, the warden, unwilling to let her die, had released her.

When other women followed suit, though, jailors started force-feeding them. A hunger striking woman would be tied down to a chair. Her mouth would be pried open with a steel gap, and a rubber tube would be jammed down her throat, usually tearing up the throat tissue.

Some women went through this process more than 200 times. Nobody got it worse, though, than Frances Parker. Her captors force-fed her rectally, and, it seems, did much more than that. When the prison doctor examined her, he found injuries that he described as "consistent with an instrument having been introduced into the vagina." Parker ultimately broke out of jail, desperate to get away from the abuse.

The government wasn't about to risk force-feeding someone as influential as Emmeline Pankhurst. When her strike started, they rushed a new law known as the "Cat And Mouse Act." Under this law, they could let Pankhurst go-and arrest her again as soon as she was healthy.

6The Jujitsu-Trained Bodyguards

Pankhurst had no intention of going back to jail. And so she called on the help of Edith Garrud, official Jujitsu instructor of the Suffragettes.

Garrud was a tiny woman, less than 5 feet tall, but she could fight. She'd already starred in an early martial arts film and ran her own dojo. Now, she taught Jujitsu to Suffragettes, believing they could use their attackers' strength against them and knock them to the ground.

Garrud would go to events dressed in a red gown, and she would invite trained martial artists to attack her. She set up a dojo at the Golden Square to train any women who were interested. It was so popular that girls around the country started setting up "jujitsu parties" of their own, where they trained one another.

Once Pankhurst was released, Garrud trained an elite team of female, armored bodyguards to guard Emmeline Pankhurst. They followed her around with clubs hidden up their dresses. Whenever the police tried to take Pankhurst away, they would pull out their clubs and strike.

5Emmeline Pankhurst's Decoys

With a warrant out for her arrest, Emmeline Pankhurst decided to deliver a speech in Camden Square. A crowd of people-some Suffragettes, some protesters who opposed every part of her movement-came out to watch. And among them were a throng of police officers, waiting to arrest her.

Pankhurst, a veil over her face, walked out on the balcony. Before the crowd, she lifted it up, revealing that it was really her. "I had reached London tonight in spite of armies of police. I am here tonight, and not a man is going to protect me, because this a woman's fight, and we are going to protect ourselves!" she told the crowd. "I am coming out among you in a few minutes and I challenge the government to re-arrest me!"

Pankhurst came out a moment later, surrounded by her jujitsu-trained, club-wielding bodyguards, the veil over her face. The police rushed her, and pandemonium broke out. The mob turned violent, protesters clashed with officers. Pankhurst was knocked unconscious, dragged into a police car, and driven away.

But when the police took off her veil, it wasn't Pankhurst they saw. The woman they'd nabbed was someone they'd never seen before. Pankhurst, in the commotion, had snuck out the back and driven away.

4Stabbing People With Hatpins

Jujitsu wasn't the only form of self-defense the Suffragettes could use. They also had their hatpins-and they knew how to kill a man with them.

The hatpin went from accessory to weapon in 1903, when a Kansas girl named Leoti Blaker was accosted by a man in New York. He'd started creeping closer and closer to her and, when he put his arm around her lower back, she pulled a foot-long hatpin out of her hair and stabbed it in his arm.

"He was such a nice-looking old gentleman. I was sorry to hurt him," Blaker said afterward. But she explained, "if New York women will tolerate mashing, Kansas girls will not."

The Suffragettes rallied behind her, and she inspired a whole wave of hatpin attacks. Women around America, following Blaker's lead, started slashing man who tried to sexually harass them with their hatpins or beating them with umbrellas. Soon, hatpin attacks were so common that, in 1910, Chicago passed a law making it illegal to carry a hatpin longer than 9 inches.

To the Suffragettes, this was a perfect example of why women needed the right to vote. "No man has a right to tell me how I shall dress," a woman named Nan Davis declared. "If the men of Chicago want to take the hatpins away from us, let them make the streets safe."

3Using Tax Laws To Send Their Husbands To Jail

One woman, named Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, had her husband sent to jail to make a statement.

At the time, men were legally responsible for their wives' taxes. It was a sexist law meant to discriminate against women, and, usually, it did. Men were entitled to their wives' tax refunds, while wives were entitled to nothing-and Wilks wanted to highlight just how unfair this was.

Wilks made more money than her husband did-she was a doctor, and her husband was a teacher. So, to prove a point, she stopped paying her taxes. Her husband protested, but she openly and publicly refused to pay them, and he couldn't afford to pay them himself.

Since her husband was legally responsible, he got sent to jail for her tax evasion. The men of the world were furious. She had sent her own husband to jail, they protested, simply to make a point.

To the Suffragettes, though, their anger was proof their point had been made. Men, one said, were unable "to realize the extent of any injustice until it touches himself." Most of these laws were unfair to women, but Dr. Wilks had found one that was unfair to the men-and now the men were protesting.

2Emily Davison Threw Herself In Front Of A Horse

Emily Davison was one of the more militant suffragists. She had set fire to mailboxes, smashed windows, and once famously hid in the cupboard of the House of Commons so that she could claim it as her residence on the census.

All of her actions got her sent to prison, where, like many Suffragists, she went on hunger strikes and went through force-feedings. For Davison, the experience was terrible, and she ended up making a failed suicide attempt in prison by throwing herself down a staircase.

After she got out, she went to the Epsom Derby, where King George V's horse was racing. Davison, as a strange form of protest, jumped onto the track and grabbed onto the king's horse, tried to pull it over, and got trampled to death.

It took Davison four agonizing days to die of her injuries. She went down in history as a martyr for the cause-and horribly traumatized the jockey riding the horse. He attended her funeral, overwhelmed by guilt, and ultimately committed suicide. For years, he told people he'd been "haunted by that poor woman's face."

1The Battle Of Glasgow

The police finally caught Emmeline Pankhurst when she gave a speech at St. Andrew's Hall in Glasgow. The Suffragettes, though, made sure it was as hard on them as physically possible.

Pankhurst publicly advertised that she would be speaking at St. Andrew's Hall, despite the warrant out for her arrest. To get in undetected, her bodyguards smuggled her in a laundry basket and hid her among the audience. 50 plainclothes police officers, though, were sneaking in too, crawling in through the lavatories and hiding in the crowd.

Pankhurst stepped out of the audience and onto a stage lined with a bouquet of flowers-and, as soon as she did, the police charged her. The Suffragettes, though, were ready. Hidden behind the flowers was a fence of barbwire.

With the police caught in the barbwire, the bodyguards rushed out and fought with the police officers. One woman pulled a gun and opened fire on the officers. It only had blanks, but it sent them into a panic. The police, though, managed to overpower the bodyguards and dragged Pankhurst away.

According to one witness's account, Pankhurst was dragged down the stairs headfirst. When a woman cried out, "For God's sake, don't use her so!" a cop knocked her down with his baton, kicked her down the stairs, and trampled over her.

The frustrated police exacted every level of brutality-and, in the end, just won more support for the Suffragettes. A few months later, they stopped their militant tactics, and, four years after that, women got the vote.

We Publish Lists By Our Readers! Submit Here . . .

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to Listverse. His writing also appears on a number of other sites, including The Onion's StarWipe and Cracked.com. His website is regularly updated with everything he writes.

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Top 10 Reasons The Suffragettes Were Actually Terrorists - Listverse

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In the early days of feminism, women known as suffragists demanded the right to vote through peaceful protests, but by 1903, it was clear that the peaceful path wasn't working. Emmeline Pankhurst led the Suffragettes into a new wave of violent, militant action, declaring, "No measure worth having has been won in any other way."

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Radical feminism is a philosophy emphasizing the patriarchal roots of inequality between men and women, or the social domination of women by men.

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In less than three years, Pussy Riot has morphed from a little-known feminist protest band to an international cause celebre. As its two jailed members are freed from prison under an amnesty, the BBC News website recaps the group's story so far.

Controversial performance

Pussy Riot was founded in 2011, but shot to greater prominence after appearing in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in February 2012, to perform an obscenity-laced song called Punk Prayer which attacked the Orthodox Church's support for President Vladimir Putin.

Arrest

Several weeks after the cathedral stunt - which was was broken up by church officials - Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were arrested and charged with "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred".

They were held without bail until their trial in late July when they were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. Samutsevich was freed on probation in October 2012, but Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina remained in jail.

Protest

The case divided Russia with many feeling the women were being too harshly treated and made examples of as part of attempts to clamp down on opposition to the government. But others felt their actions were a gross offence to the Orthodox faith.

Cause celebre

The trio's fate attracted much international attention. Musicians like Sting, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Madonna and Yoko Ono called for their release, while human rights groups designated them prisoners of conscience. Pussy Riot's distinctive coloured balaclavas became a widely-recognised symbol.

Prison regime

The women - both mothers of young children - faced tough conditions inside Russia's prison system and had a number of parole requests turned down. Tolokonnikova (above left) complained of abuses by prison staff and went on hunger strike.

Amnesty

The pair's sentences were due to end in March 2014, but their release became inevitable in December after an amnesty law was signed by the Russian parliament, covering at least 20,000 prisoners, including mothers.

Release

Mr Putin's critics see the amnesty as a bid to avoid controversy overshadowing Russia's hosting of the Winter Olympics in February. Maria Alyokhina - the first of the duo to be freed from jail - told a Russian TV channel that the amnesty was a PR stunt and she would rather have remained in prison.

Tolokonnikova, gesturing as she walked out of a prison hospital in Siberia, said that together with Alyokhina she would set up a human rights group to help prisoners.

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In less than three years, Pussy Riot has morphed from a little-known feminist protest band to an international cause celebre. As its two jailed members are freed from prison under an amnesty, the BBC News website recaps the group's story so far.

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They started out in Ukraine, established a thriving headquarters in Paris and last year succeeded in ambushing a startled Vladimir Putin during a visit to a German trade fair. Now the controversial activists of Femen, notorious for their topless protests on issues such as prostitution, abortion and the wearing of the hijab, are planning to target Britain.

In London to promote a documentary on the group's activities, founder member and spokesperson Alexandra Shevchenko said Femen UK would focus on issues such as female genital mutilation (FGM), forced marriage and the sex industry. "No one is talking about FGM in England," she said. "People assume it is too violent and extreme to exist here, that it only happens in Africa and the Middle East, but the UK has some of the highest levels in the west."

The setting up of a new British arm of Femen's operations is likely to generate mixed feelings among indigenous feminist groups. A succession of high-profile topless protests since the group's formation in 2009 was greeted with bafflement and amusement by many observers, although given the heavy-handed treatment often meted out by bodyguards and police there is no doubting its members' courage.

According to the 25-year-old Shevchenko, Femen has no formal leadership, but hopes to establish a "homegrown" UK branch, built up from a base of British feminist activists, with whom she is in discussions this weekend.

Many Femen members have been exiled from Ukraine. From their base in Paris, where they made headlines recently by invading the catwalk at Paris fashion week, they hope to visit London to help train recruits for membership, which is about more than signing a form.

"Becoming a member of Femen takes more than just a few days," said Shevchenko. "You must be physically and psychologically prepared. Of course, you have to support our ideology as a starting point, but it is also a question of being fit in your body and mind to fight - to be arrested, struggle with police and jump fences. Our main enemy is patriarchy and its three manifestations - dictatorship, religion and the sex industry. These issues are universal."

Shevchenko attributes Femen's success in France, where it has its largest membership, to the long francophone tradition of protest and organised resistance. Can the same rebellious potential be tapped this side of the Channel?

"Britain is separate from the rest of the European Union and has its own social and historical character," said Shevchenko. "Unlike in Ukraine, there has already been a sexual revolution here and people know what feminism is. But I don't think our campaigns will be very different. Femen UK will be about action. Of course, there is no obvious dictatorship here, but rightwing extremists are on the rise in the form of nationalism all over Europe. Likewise, we have the conservative influence of Christianity and Islamism, and of course the sex industry is everywhere."

In the summer of 2012, the group staged a protest at London's City Hall against the participation of Islamist regimes in the Olympic Games, before being apprehended by police.

"Of course, it is not the Ukraine or Russia - the secret service will not try to kill you here," she said. "But there is not a big difference ultimately, because if you are trying to do sextremist actions that target important people, you will be arrested, recorded, tracked and banned from future protests."

Femen's campaigns against Islamism have incited hostility from Muslim and non-Muslim women, alongside charges of xenophobia and cultural imperialism.

Femen UK would, according to Shevchenko, be an addition to, not a substitute for, other forms of feminist campaigning in Britain. She claimed that there is an appetite among young women all over Europe for a new, more dynamic form of resistance.

"There is real feminist pride in the UK, which is why Femen appeals to women. But many are becoming disappointed with classical feminism, which is like library feminism," she said. "Of course, we still need those who make theory, but feminism should be like an army, with different departments. Femen is like the commanders taking the frontline to remove the mask and show the ugly sexist face of society."

The UK premiere of an acclaimed documentary entitled Ukraine is Not a Brothel, by Australian director Kitty Green, was screened as part of the 2013 BFI film festival. The film made international headlines in September following its world premiere at the Venice film festival, where it revealed the role of a Ukrainian man, Victor Svyatski, as the alleged leader of Femen.
Topics

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Fearless ... and topless: Femen activists to bring 'sextremism' to the UK

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They started out in Ukraine, established a thriving headquarters in Paris and last year succeeded in ambushing a startled Vladimir Putin during a visit to a German trade fair. Now the controversial activists of Femen, notorious for their topless protests on issues such as prostitution, abortion and the wearing of the hijab, are planning to target Britain.

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Before meeting Inna Shevchenko I would have said it was impossible for an educated 19-year-old woman studying journalism at a prestigious university in a European capital, while working as the city mayor's press officer, to know nothing about feminism. But Shevchenko is adamant. She had literally never even heard of it, until one evening she received a message on Russia's version of Facebook that would change her life, and may well be about to change Britain.

"It said: 'Hello, we are women's group and we want to start our activity in Kiev and we are against sex tourism and prostitution. Do you share our point of view, let's meet?' I was very active, I was head of student parliament, so I say: 'Yes, hello, I'm also against prostitution.' But I realised afterwards that I'd never even thought about prostitution - am I against or for it? It was such a new idea - someone was against prostitution, so I'm suddenly asking myself, am I against prostitution? I don't know. I'd just never thought about it before."

Since she started to think - and do - something about it, Shevchenko has been sacked, abducted by Belarussian secret police, beaten, tortured, threatened with death and forced to flee Ukraine for asylum in Paris, where she has been spat on in the street and left homeless by an arson attack that destroyed the few belongings she had left. You wouldn't guess any of that from her demeanour, though: she comes across as a calm, cheerful and unusually intelligent young professional. "Now I don't have any fear," she grins, before correcting herself. "I have only one fear - to be imbecilic. To be passive. That is the only fear I have."

The organisation Shevchenko joined four years ago, and now effectively leads, was a tiny group of Ukranian women who called themselves Femen. For the first two years they protested against prostitution and sex tourism, and nobody paid much notice - until they stumbled upon a tactic that has made headlines across the world and turned them into a global movement. Femen activists - "sextremists" - now protest topless, with slogans painted across their bare breasts - "Fuck Your Morals", "This Is Not a Sex Toy", "Poor Because of You" - and run screaming and shouting at public figures who have so far included Silvio Berlusconi, Vladimir Putin and the supermodel host of a TV modelling contest. The group now have branches in nine countries, with plans to open in London soon.

At first Shevchenko hated the idea of protesting topless. "I was using this argument like, 'you can't be against prostitution and then take your clothes off', but really it was just that I could not imagine doing it. I had only one idea of being naked - in the bed of men, or promoting yoghurt in an advert like this," and she adopts a baby doll pose with a finger in her mouth. "I had only this imagination, I couldn't put it in my head that it could have a different meaning."

When I first heard about Femen, I thought gorgeous, young, topless blondes could be no more feminist than those women who spend hours putting on makeup and say things like, "It's my right to have a boob job because feminism says I'm worth it." I could not have been more wrong. Asked how she can justify exploiting the very sexual objectification she's protesting against, she says, "I'm not against my body. I'm against their point of view on my body. We are giving you meaning to women's body. We're showing it in a completely different context, with completely different emotion - not with this," and she poses like a glamour model.

"We're showing it as powerful women running and facing them. We are not making sexy sounds, we are screaming as much as we can with our political demands, we're not showing a passive smiling body, we're showing an aggressive, screaming body. My body is always saying something. I use it as a small poster to write my political demand."

It was only meant to be a tactic at first, but soon they realised it was the perfect dramatisation of their ideology. "We are showing the clash between patriarchal society and women - you can see it in action every time we protest," she says. In footage the viciousness of police violence towards the half-naked woman is indeed shocking. "This reaction," she points out, "is the perfect answer to people who say there's no need for us."

But there is something also suspect about the preponderance of beautiful blondes among Femen's sextremist activists. "It's an old critique now," she smiles, "because now we have branches all over the world, and women are very different. In Ukraine I will not deny that we were nearly all looking the same. And again, it couldn't happen any other way, because the society demands it when you are growing up. You are searching for men, so you have to look good. Ukrainian women, we all follow this beauty standard, and I'm not proud of that, of course, but it's a cultural thing.

"But I will not deny that this is also within the ideology of Femen. What we are doing is showing the victim of patriarchy. But now she's rebelling and she's fighting - we're showing this Barbie fighting against everything that is making her be plastic and fantastic. We're showing the way they made us and now we're fighting back. It's an instrument of patriarchy and now we're using it against it. So I cannot deny that sometimes we do this on purpose."

Still, some western feminists have taken a dim view, but Shevchenko is too sophisticated to be drawn into a fight. "We are not fighting with other feminists; we are not here for that. I'm for feminism in any form. I can have my opinion on the way other movements do their feminism, but I will never criticise them, for I would go against myself - I am feminist. Feminism is not only one form, when we write amazing theory with a great explanation that is so clear and so fair. Feminists are not only that. We can do everything, and so Femen are kind of feminist al-Qaida, if you want. We are feminist terrorists coming and showing how it is."

Western feminists' reservations might be revised if they lived in Ukraine. "Being a woman in Ukraine, what kind of possibilities do you have? To become housewife, or to become prostitute. In my town there were women who were searching for any man, just to get a man. All my female school friends got married after they finished school, they were 17, 18. For 17 years growing up in that town I had only one idea in my head: how to get out of this shit." But at university she soon realised all the other female students were only there to find a better class of husband from a rich family. Her older sister did try to use her education to get a good job, "and in nearly every application she got back an email asking for her to send a picture of herself in a bikini, and to send her measurements, and as part of your office they say you have to have sex with your boss. This is the reality for young Ukrainian woman."

Shevchenko couldn't even go out at night in Kiev. "You're a piece of meat, and men think they can do whatever to you, touch you - it is a hell there. So when people say what about results for Femen, I'm proud to say we brought the idea of feminism and women's rights to a politically ignorant part of the world like Ukraine, Russia, Belarus. And I'm proud to say I think we brought feminism back on to the streets of Europe as well."

When Shevkencho was forced to seek asylum in France after chainsawing down a crucifix in Kiev last year, she wondered what Femen could offer to progressive, liberal, secular Paris. But by then Femen's mission had broadened from protests against patriarchy and the sex industry to include dictatorships and, most controversially, religion - which presents plenty of opportunities in Paris. Femen's HQ lies in a scruffy immigrant neighbourhood of north and west Africans, a deeply traditional and religious community, and when I observe that she cuts a fairly incongruous figure in the street, Shevchenko grins. "I love this area, it's very Femen style. I like to be inside the problem, you know?"

The French Muslim community is unsurprisingly outraged by Femen, and Shevchenko has been accused of disrespecting Muslim feminists, but she rejects the very concept. "I will never have a discussion about Muslim feminism because it doesn't exist. It cannot exist. It's oxymoronic. It's Islam, clearly, saying women must be covered for their dignity. I mean come on. Once any monotheistic religion is starting, feminism is finished. You can forget about women's rights or human rights in general. So for me, Muslim feminist, Christian feminist, Jewish feminist, it's all oxymoronic.

"People say I am offending religious feelings - well, I know I am doing it! And every time I start to talk about such things I will do it, but I don't do it for provocation, I'm simply worried about what is going on. Why do we have to think about a choice between religion and political ideals - what the fuck is religion doing on the same level as a political idea? I think it is the most stupid thing society did to let religion on the same level in political discussion."

A young Muslim member in Tunisia was jailed for posting a topless image of herself online, and there were calls for her to be stoned to death. Is it irresponsible to encourage women in Muslim countries to take such a risk? "I'm not going to defend myself by saying, 'Oh I'm not encouraging them.' I am encouraging women, of course. I'm thankful that I got this little message on Russian Facebook that encouraged me to start, so of course I'm encouraging women, because I know what kind of shit we live in. And now for many women in Tunisia she is an example."

Shevchenko has not yet been able to visit London due to her asylum status, but about a dozen British women have already been in touch, and she is clear about Femen's targets here. "We will take care of prostitution, FGM, niqab discussion, Muslim extremism, and be in opposition to British conservatism and extra political correctness wherever it will appear. And we will find the way to come in Al-Madinah school or Buckingham palace."

But first she has a minor PR problem to deal with. A documentary about Femen, Ukraine Is Not a Brothel, premiered at a film festival in September, and revealed the involvement of a man behind some of the ideas for the groups protests. He's seen in the film telling the women they are "weak", "spineless" and "bitches", and journalists quickly began casting him as the Malcolm McLaren to their Sex Pistols, claiming Femen was actually his organisation.

"I wish everyone who wrote about the film would actually see it," Shevchenko groans. "But it proves how deep this patriarchal culture is in our minds that even intellectual people were so happy to say, 'Ah, there is a man!' And immediately they made him founder of the movement. He was never the founder of the movement! Femen founded by a man - what the fuck? This was very brutal for me, because they started to say Femen are not authentic feminists."

In fact, he was a friend of one of the original founders, and would occasionally come along to meetings to offer ideas. "He was giving good advice sometimes, I cannot deny it, but then his demands started to grow and he started to just demand what he wants, and treat us like shit. Of course everyone is saying, how could you have let him? But of course we didn't open the door and say: 'Please come in dictator, please come in patriarchy and kick our ass.'"

He no longer has anything to do with Femen. But if even Femen could allow themselves to be bullied by a man for a while, Shevchenko says, "Who can say there is no need for feminism?"
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Femen leader Inna Shevchenko: 'I'm for any form of feminism'

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Before meeting Inna Shevchenko I would have said it was impossible for an educated 19-year-old woman studying journalism at a prestigious university in a European capital, while working as the city mayor's press officer, to know nothing about feminism. But Shevchenko is adamant.

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