title: Gong Li

text: Gong was head of jury at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival and the 2002 Venice Film Festival, the first Asian person to hold such position at both events. Over the course of her career, Gong has won three Hundred Flowers Awards, two Golden Rooster Awards, a Hong Kong Film Award, and honorary awards at the Berlin and Cannes film festivals. She was appointed as a Commander (Commandeur) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France in 2010.


title: Gong Li

text: Gong Li was born on 31 December 1965 in Shenyang, Liaoning, China, the youngest of five children. Her father was a professor of economics and her mother was a teacher. She grew up in Jinan, the capital of Shandong. She has been fond of singing and dancing since childhood, and dreamt of becoming a singer.


title: Gong Li

text: She studied in Jinan Sanhe Street Primary School. When she was in grade two, she was recommended by the school to sing children's songs at Jinan People's Broadcasting Station. In Jinan No.2 Middle School, Gong spent six years in high school, when she was a member of the school's literature and art team.


title: Gong Li

text: In 1985, she was accepted to study at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing; she graduated in 1989. While a student at the Central Academy of Drama, she was discovered by Zhang Yimou, who chose her for the lead role in "Red Sorghum," his first film as a director.


title: Gong Li

text: In 1987, Gong was first chosen by director Zhang Yimou to act in the anti-Japanese war romance "Red Sorghum", which officially launched her 15-year cooperation with the China's fifth-generation directors. The film won the Golden Bear at the 38th Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the first Chinese film to win this award. It also won the Golden Rooster Awards and the Hundred Flowers Awards for Best Picture in 1988.


title: Gong Li

text: In 1989, Gong starred in Zhang Yimou’s second counterterrorism film, Codename Cougar, for which she won the Hundred Flowers Awards for Best Supporting Actress, ushering in a new stage of exploring acting skills and style.


title: Gong Li

text: Over the several years following her 1987 acting debut in "Red Sorghum", Gong received international acclaim for her roles in several more Zhang Yimou films.


title: Gong Li

text: In 1990, Gong Continued to cooperate with Zhang Yimou and starred in his family ethics movie Ju Dou, which won the Luis Buñuel Special Award at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 63rd Academy Awards, becoming the first Chinese film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Gong also won the Best Actress award at the Varna International Film Festival.


title: Gong Li

text: In 1991, Gong starred in Zhang Yimou's representative film Raise the Red Lantern, which won the Silver Lion award at the 48th Venice Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Academy Awards. Gong, playing a rebellious mistress in the film, won the Hundred Flowers Awards for Best Actress and was nominated for the David di Donatello Awards and the NSFC for Best Actress. Her performance in the "Raise the Red Lantern" (1991) put her in the international spotlight again.


title: Gong Li

text: In 1992, Gong starred in the rural drama The Story of Qiu Ju, which won the Golden Lion award at the 49th Venice International Film Festival. Gong's portrayal of rural woman Qiu Ju not only won the Golden Rooster Awards and the Japanese Movie Critics Awards for Best Actress, but also helped her named Best Actress at the 49th Venice Film Festival.


title: Gong Li

text: In 1993, she received a New York Film Critics Circle award for her role in "Farewell My Concubine" (1993). Directed by Chen Kaige, the film was her first major role with a director other than Zhang Yimou. In the same year, she was awarded with the Berlinale Camera at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival. "Premiere" magazine ranked her performance in "Farewell My Concubine" as the 89th greatest performance of all time. She also worked with renowned director Stephen Chow in comedy films "" (1991) and "Flirting Scholar" (1993).


title: Gong Li

text: Immune to political repercussions because of her fame, Gong Li began criticizing the censorship policy in China. Her films "Farewell My Concubine" and "The Story of Qiu Ju" were initially banned in China for being thinly-veiled critiques of the Chinese government. Regarding the sexual content in "Ju Dou", Chinese censorship deemed the film "a bad influence on the physical and spiritual health of young people."


title: Gong Li

text: In 1994, Gong played Jia Zhen, the wife of Xu Fugui, in the drama "To Live" with Zhang Yimou, which won the Grand Prix at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. She was also nominated for the Chlotrudis Awards for Best Actress.


title: Gong Li

text: In 1995, Gong starred in "Shanghai Triad", her breakup with Zhang Yimou, in which she played a seductive stage queen. The film won the Technical Grand Prize of Cannes Film Festival, the National Board of Review for Best Foreign Language film, and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.


title: Gong Li

text: In 1996, Gong and Chen Kaige collaborated again in the romantic film "Temptress Moon", which was in competition for the Palme d'Or of the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. Gong has been nominated for her second best Actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards for her role as rebellious teenage girl Ru Yi. She also appeared on the cover of Time magazine(1996).


title: Gong Li

text: In 1997, Gong worked with Jeremy Irons on the romantic drama "Chinese Box", which won the Best Original Music award at the Venice Film Festival. In the same year, Gong was invited to be a jury at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Chinese to be a jury at the festival.


title: Gong Li

text: In 1999, Gong and Chen Kaige collaborated for the third film "The Emperor and the Assassin", which won the Technical Grand Prize at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.


title: Gong Li

text: In many of her early movies, Gong represents a tragic victim and an abused soul (physically or emotionally), trying to release herself from an impossible maze of corruption, violence and suppression. In "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Shanghai Triad" (1995) an additional tragic element is added to her being as she unintentionally becomes the executioner of new innocent victims, making her realize that she has assisted the dark cynical system.


title: Gong Li

text: In 2000, Gong won her second international Best Actress trophy for her performance as a struggling single mother in "Breaking the Silence" (2000) at the Montreal World Film Festival, directed by Sun Zhou. She attended the Montreal World Film Festival that year, where she was awarded a special Grand Prix of the Americas for lifetime achievement for her outstanding achievement. In the same year, Gong was invited by the Berlin Film Festival to be the president of its international jury for the festival's 50th anniversary.


title: Gong Li

text: In the early 2000s, Gong also starred in two films directed by Wong Kar-wai, "2046" and "Eros" (both in 2004), which were seen as "an important opportunity to get rid of the influence of Zhang Yimou". She also attended the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where she was awarded the Festival Trophy for her contributions to film.


title: Gong Li

text: Despite her popularity, Gong avoided Hollywood for years, due to a lack of confidence in speaking English. She made her English speaking debut in 2005 when she starred as Hatsumomo in "Memoirs of a Geisha". Her performance was met with generally positive reviews. Time Magazine's Richard Corliss to describe her as Gong also won the National Board of Review for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Hatsumomo. Her other English-language roles to date included "Miami Vice" in 2006 and "Hannibal Rising" in 2007. In all three films, she learned her English lines phonetically.


title: Gong Li

text: Through three English-language films, Gong has gradually established herself in Hollywood. Speaking of the Hollywood experience, Gong said it broadened her horizons, gave her a better idea of what she liked and allowed her to experiment with different acting styles.


title: Gong Li

text: In 2006, Gong worked again with Zhang Yimou for historical epic "Curse of the Golden Flower", for which She won the best Actress at the 26th Hong Kong Film Awards. "Time" named her performance as the Empress as the 7th greatest performance of the year.


title: Gong Li

text: She narrated "Beijing" (2008), an audio walking tour by Louis Vuitton and Soundwalk, which won an Audie Award for Best Original Work in 2009.


title: Gong Li

text: In 2010, Gong starred in the World War II-era thriller "Shanghai" as a spy who is disguised as the wife of a triad boss (played by Chow Yun-fat). She turned to documentaries and photographs about World War II, besides taking dancing classes three times a week, to ensure an accurate portrayal of the character. During a press junket for the film, she stated that she was becoming more selective with the Chinese language projects offered to her.


title: Gong Li

text: In 2014, Gong was the president of the jury for the 17th Shanghai International Film Festival. Later that same year, she reunited with Zhang Yimou for the film "Coming Home", which is set during the throes of the Cultural Revolution; this film was their first collaboration since 2006.


title: Gong Li

text: In 2019, Gong was cast in Lou Ye's period drama "Saturday Fiction", where she plays an actress who is working undercover gathering intelligence for the Allies. The film was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 76th Venice International Film Festival. Gong learned shooting and hypnosis for the spy film. Her performance gained rave reviews. That year, she was also cast in the live-action adaptation of the 1998 Disney animated film "Mulan", as a powerful witch. While the film, released in 2020, had a mixed reception, Gong's performance was widely praised by critics. The Vanity Fair's chief critic, Richard Lawson, wrote in his review, "It is a pleasure as ever to watch Gong do her thing, slinking and thrashing around in a fabulous black witch’s cloak."


title: Gong Li

text: In 2020, Gong was cast in Peter Chan's biographical film "Leap", where she plays the hard-driving, real-life head coach of the Chinese women’s national volleyball team Lang Ping.


title: Gong Li

text: In 2021, Gong was invited to be the jury president of the 11th Beijing International Film Festival, becoming the first female jury president in the history of the festival.


title: Gong Li

text: Her personal and professional relationship with director Zhang Yimou has been highly publicized. The pair collaborated on six films between 1987 and 1995, before ending their relationship. They reunited in 2006 for the film "Curse of the Golden Flower" and in 2014 on "Coming Home".


title: Gong Li

text: Gong was nominated Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 16 October 2000.


title: Gong Li

text: Gong applied for Singapore citizenship in early 2008. When overseas professional obligations prevented her from showing up at her scheduled August citizenship ceremony, she was harshly criticized for not making it a priority. On Saturday, 8 November 2008, Gong, in an effort to make amends, attended a citizenship ceremony held at Teck Ghee Community Club and received her Singapore citizenship certificate from Member of Parliament Lee Bee Wah. Gong was reportedly considering renouncing Singapore citizenship after being blacklisted in China.


title: Gong Li

text: Gong is the first Chinese ambassador for L'Oreal Paris in 1997. She also served as ambassador for Midea, Chopard and Osim International.


title: Gong Li

text: Since 2021, Gong has been the first Chinese artist to become the global high jewelry ambassador for Cartier.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (; born 5 June 1942) is an Equatoguinean politician and former military officer who has served as the second president of Equatorial Guinea since August 1979. He is the longest-serving president of any country ever and the first or second-longest consecutively-serving current non-royal national leader in the world.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: After graduating from military school, Obiang held numerous positions under the presidency of his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, including director of the notorious Black Beach prison. He ousted Macías in a 1979 military coup and took control of the country as president and chairman of the Supreme Military Council junta. After the country's nominal return to civilian rule in 1982, he founded the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) in 1987, which was the country's sole legal party until 1992. He has overseen Equatorial Guinea's emergence as an important oil producer, beginning in the 1990s. Obiang was Chairperson of the African Union from 2011 to 2012.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Obiang is regarded as authoritarian leader. He has been widely accused of corruption and abuse of power. Under his rule, Equatorial Guinea continues to have one of the worst human rights records in the world. In marked contrast to the trend toward democracy in most of Africa, Equatorial Guinea is currently a dominant-party state, in which Obiang's PDGE holds virtually all governing power in the nation and has held all or almost all seats in the legislature since its creation. The constitution provides Obiang sweeping powers, including the right to rule by decree, effectively making his government a legal dictatorship. Obiang has placed family members in key government positions.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: From a family of the Esangui ethnic clan, he was born in the town of Acoacán (Mongomo district, Wele-Nzas province), belonging to the colony of Spanish Guinea, on the current border with Gabon, within the Continental Equatorial Guinea. Son of the Gabonese Santiago Nguema Eneme Obama and María Mbasogo Ngui, Obiang was the third of ten brothers, among whom are also the National Security Delegate Armengol Ondo Nguema and former National Defense Minister Antonio Mba Nguema. Obiang's parents emigrated from Gabon to avoid paying capitation taxes and take advantage of the good economic situation in Spanish Guinea. After the death of María Mbasogo Ngui, Obiang and his brothers were raised by his father and his new wife Carmen Mikue Mbira.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Obiang completed his first studies at the Cardenal Cisneros School Group in Ebebiyin and at the La Salle Center in Bata (now the Enrique Nov Okenve National College), where he obtained a degree in labor administration.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Obiang joined the Colonial Guard during Equatorial Guinea's colonial period and attended the General Military Academy in Zaragoza, Spain. He achieved the rank of lieutenant after his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, was elected the country's first president. Under Macías, Obiang held various positions, including the governor of Bioko and leader of the National Guard. He was also head of Black Beach Prison, notorious for severely torturing its inmates.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: After Macías ordered the murders of several members of the family they shared, including Obiang's brother, Obiang and others in Macías's inner circle feared the president had become insane. Obiang overthrew his uncle on 3 August 1979 in a bloody "coup d'état", and placed him on trial for his actions, including the genocide of the Bubi people, over the previous decade. Macías was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on 29 September 1979. A new Moroccan presidential guard was required to form the firing squad, because local soldiers feared his alleged magical powers.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Obiang declared that the new government would make a fresh start from Macías's brutal and repressive régime. He granted amnesty to political prisoners, and ended the previous régime's system of forced labor. However, he made virtually no mention of his own role in the atrocities committed under his uncle's rule.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: The country nominally returned to civilian rule in 1982, with the enactment of a slightly less authoritarian constitution. At the same time, Obiang was elected to a seven-year term as president; he was the only candidate. He was reelected in 1989, again as the only candidate. After other parties were nominally allowed to organize in 1992, he was reelected in 1996 and 2002 with 98 percent of the vote in elections condemned as fraudulent by international observers. In 2002, for instance, at least one voting district was recorded as giving Obiang 103 percent of the vote.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: He was reelected for a fourth term in 2009 with 97% of the vote, again amid accusations of voter fraud and intimidation, beating opposition leader Plácido Micó Abogo.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Obiang's rule was at first considered more humane than that of his uncle. By some accounts, however, it has become increasingly brutal, and has bucked the larger trend toward greater democracy in Africa. According to most domestic and international observers, he leads one of the most corrupt, ethnocentric and repressive regimes in the world. Equatorial Guinea is essentially a one-party state dominated by Obiang's Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE). The constitution grants Obiang sweeping powers, including the power to rule by decree.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Although opposition parties were legalized in 1992, the legislature remains dominated by the PDGE, and there is no substantive opposition to executive decisions. At present, every Senate seat and all but one seat in the Chamber of Deputies is held by the PDGE. There have never been more than eight opposition deputies in the lower house, while the PDGE has held every seat in the Senate since its inception in 2013. For all intents and purposes, Obiang holds all governing power in the nation.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: The opposition is barely tolerated; indeed, a 2006 article in "Der Spiegel" quoted Obiang as asking, "What right does the opposition have to criticize the actions of a government?" The opposition is severely hampered by the lack of a free press as a vehicle for their views. There are no newspapers and all broadcast media are either owned outright by the government or controlled by its allies.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Equatorial Guinea's relations with the United States cooled in 1993, after Ambassador John E. Bennett was accused of practicing witchcraft at the graves of 10 British airmen who were killed when their plane crashed there during World War II. Bennett left after receiving a death threat at the U.S. Embassy in Malabo in 1994. In his farewell address, he publicly named the government's most notorious torturers, including Equatorial Guinea's Minister of National Security, Manuel Nguema Mba, another Obiang uncle. No new envoy was appointed, and the embassy was closed in 1996, leaving its affairs to be handled by the embassy in neighboring Cameroon.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Things turned around for the Obiang regime after the terrorist attacks in 2001 on New York and Washington, after which the United States re-prioritized its dealings with key African states. On 25 January 2002, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, a neoconservative Israeli-based think tank, sponsored a forum on 15 May 2006. Speaking at the IASPS forum, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter H. Kansteiner said, "African oil is of national strategic interest to us, and it will increase and become more important as we move forward."


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: In a lengthy state visit from March to April 2006, President Obiang sought to reopen the closed embassy in the US, saying that "the lack of a U.S. diplomatic presence is definitely holding back economic growth." President Obiang was warmly greeted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who called him a "good friend".


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Public relations company Cassidy & Associates may have been partially responsible for the change in tone between Obiang and the United States government. Since 2004, Cassidy had been employed by the dictator's government at a rate of at least $120,000 a month.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: By October 2006, however, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had raised concerns about the proposal to build the new embassy on land owned by Obiang, whom the United Nations Commission on Human Rights accused of directly overseeing the torture of opponents. The new embassy chancery opened in 2013.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: In July 2003, state-operated radio declared Obiang "the country's god" with "all power over men and things." It added that the president was "in permanent contact with the Almighty" and "can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell." He personally made similar comments in 1993. Macías had also proclaimed himself a god.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Obiang has encouraged his cult of personality by ensuring that public speeches end in well-wishing for himself rather than for the nation as a whole. Many important buildings have a presidential lodge, many towns and cities have streets commemorating Obiang's coup against Macías, and many people wear clothes with his face printed on them.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Like his predecessor and other African strongmen such as Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Seko, Obiang has assigned himself several creative titles. Among them are "gentleman of the great island of Bioko, Annobón and Río Muni." He also refers to himself as "El Jefe" (the boss).


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: In 2008, American journalist Peter Maass called Obiang Africa's worst dictator, worse than Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. While he was researching a book on the country's oil boom in 2004, Maass recalled that no one approached him on the streets. He believed that the only time he had encountered a more docile populace was in North Korea.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: In an October 2012 interview on CNN, Christiane Amanpour asked Obiang whether he would step down at the end of his current term (2009–2016) since he had been reelected at least four times in his reign of over thirty years. In his response, Obiang categorically refused to step down despite term limits in the 2011 constitution.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Abuses under Obiang have included "unlawful killings by security forces; government-sanctioned kidnappings; systematic torture of prisoners and detainees by security forces; life-threatening conditions in prisons and detention facilities; impunity; arbitrary arrest, detention, and incommunicado detention."


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: The few private media outlets in the country are largely owned by persons close to Obiang. Freedoms of association and of assembly are severely curtailed, and the government imposes restrictive conditions on the registration and operation of nongovernmental organizations. The few local activists who work on human rights-related issues often face intimidation, harassment, and reprisals.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: "Forbes" magazine has said that Obiang, with a net worth of US$600 million, is one of the world's wealthiest heads of state.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: In 2003, Obiang told his citizenry that he felt compelled to take full control of the national treasury in order to prevent civil servants from being tempted to engage in corrupt practices. Obiang then deposited more than half a billion dollars into more than sixty accounts controlled by himself and his family at Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., leading a U.S. federal court to fine the bank $16 million for allowing him to do so. A United States Senate investigation in 2004 found that the Washington-based Riggs Bank had


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: In 2008, the country became a candidate for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative – an international project meant to promote openness about government oil revenues – but never qualified and missed the April 2010 deadline. Transparency International includes Equatorial Guinea on its list of twelve most corrupt states.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Beginning in 2007, Obiang and several other African state leaders came under investigation for corruption and fraudulent use of funds. He was suspected of using public funds to finance private mansions and other luxuries for both himself and his family. He and his son, in particular, owned several properties and supercars in France. Several complaints were also filed in US courts against Obiang's son. Attorneys stressed that the funds appropriated by the Obiangs were taken quite legally under Equatoguinean laws, even though those laws might not agree with international standards.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: The U.S. Department of Justice alleged that Obiang and his son had appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars through corruption. In 2011 and early 2012, many assets were seized from Obiang and his son by the French and American governments, including mansions, wine collections, and supercars. The United States, France and Spain have all investigated the Obiang family's use of public funds. The corruption investigation is ongoing.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Obiang, his cabinet and his family allegedly have received billions in undisclosed oil revenue each year from the nation's oil production. Marathon Oil purchased land from Abayak, Obiang's personal investment vehicle, for more than $2 million; in June 2004 the sale was pending but Marathon had already made a $611,000 first payment with a check made out to Obiang. Marathon also was involved in a joint venture to operate two gas plants with GEOGAM, a quasi-state firm in which Abayak controlled a 75% stake.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Although the cabinet has made moderate increases in social spending, these remain far overshadowed by the spending on, for instance, presidential palaces. In addition, the Obiang administration has been characterized by harassment of dissenters and foreign officials seeking to report on conditions.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Obiang filed a libel lawsuit in a French court against an organization he believed was demeaning his image by saying that his government had committed such acts, but the case was dismissed.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Obiang has made several pledges to commit to open governance, reduce corruption, increase transparency, and improve the quality of life and uphold the basic freedoms of his citizens. Critics say that Obiang's government has made very little progress toward this goal, however. Several international groups have called for Obiang to:


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: The U.S. Justice Department has alleged that Obiang's son also extorted funds from lumber and construction companies by inflating contractor payments by as much as 500%, then funnelled the funds into a private accounts for his own use. Obiang and his cabinet have defended Kiki, as his son is known. Lawyers uphold his innocence in both US and French courts, saying he received the funds legally though legitimate business enterprises.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Shortly after the emergence of these allegations, Obiang named his son Equatorial Guinea's deputy permanent delegate to UNESCO, possibly giving him diplomatic immunity from prosecution. Obiang has created an independent audit task force to review the expenditures and financials of public figures in the government, screen for corruption, and increase financial transparency. The head of this task force, however, was appointed by Obiang himself.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: Obiang had a close relationship with the Washington DC-based Riggs Bank. He is said to have been welcomed by top Riggs officials, who held a luncheon in his honor. Publicity regarding this relationship would later contribute to the downfall of Riggs.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: On 10 November 2010, the Supreme Court of France ruled that a complaint filed by Transparency International in France on 2 December 2008 was admissible to the court system there. The decision allowed the appointment of an investigating judge and a judicial inquiry into claims that Obiang used state funds to purchase private property in France.


title: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

text: A 2010 article published in "Forbes" magazine suggested that Obiang gathered roughly $700 million of the country's wealth in US bank accounts.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Emmeline Pankhurst ("née" Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was an English political activist who organised the UK suffragette movement and helped women win the right to vote. In 1999, "Time" named her as one of the , stating that "she shaped an idea of objects for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Born in the Moss Side district of Manchester to politically active parents, Pankhurst was introduced at the age of 14 to the women's suffrage movement. She founded and became involved with the Women's Franchise League, which advocated suffrage for both married and unmarried women. When that organisation broke apart, she tried to join the left-leaning Independent Labour Party through her friendship with socialist Keir Hardie but was initially refused membership by the local branch on account of her sex. While working as a Poor Law Guardian, she was shocked at the harsh conditions she encountered in Manchester's workhouses.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In 1903, Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an all-women suffrage advocacy organisation dedicated to "deeds, not words". The group identified as independent from – and often in opposition to – political parties. It became known for physical confrontations: its members smashed windows and assaulted police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists received repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions, and were often force-fed. As Pankhurst's eldest daughter Christabel took leadership of the WSPU, antagonism between the group and the government grew. Eventually the group adopted arson as a tactic, and more moderate organisations spoke out against the Pankhurst family. In 1913 several prominent individuals left the WSPU, among them Pankhurst's younger daughters, Adela and Sylvia. Emmeline was so furious that she "gave [Adela] a ticket, £20, and a letter of introduction to a suffragette in Australia, and firmly insisted that she emigrate". Adela complied and the family rift was never healed. Sylvia became a socialist.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: With the advent of the First World War, Emmeline and Christabel called an immediate halt to the militant terrorism in support of the British government's stand against the "German Peril". Emmeline organised and led a massive procession called the "Women's Right to Serve demonstration" to illustrate women's contribution to the war effort. Emmeline and Christabel urged women to aid industrial production and encouraged young men to fight, becoming prominent figures in the white feather movement. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act granted votes to all men over the age of 21 and women over the age of 30. This discrepancy was intended to ensure that men did not become minority voters as a consequence of the huge number of deaths suffered during the First World War.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: She transformed the WSPU machinery into the Women's Party, which was dedicated to promoting women's equality in public life. In her later years, she became concerned with what she perceived as the menace posed by Bolshevism and joined the Conservative Party. She was selected as the Conservative candidate for Whitechapel and St Georges in 1927. She died on 14 June 1928, only weeks before the Conservative government's Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 extended the vote to all women over 21 years of age on 2 July 1928. She was commemorated two years later with a statue in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to the Houses of Parliament.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Emmeline Goulden was born on Sloan Street in the Moss Side district of Manchester on 15 July 1858. At school her teachers called her Emily, a name she preferred to be called. Although her birth certificate says otherwise, she believed and later claimed her birthday was a day earlier, on Bastille Day (14 July). Most biographies, including those written by her daughters, repeat this claim. Feeling a kinship with the female revolutionaries who stormed the Bastille, she said in 1908: "I have always thought that the fact that I was born on that day had some kind of influence over my life." The family into which she was born had been steeped in political agitation for generations; her mother, Sophia, was a Manx woman from the Isle of Man who was descended from men who were charged with social unrest and slander.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In 1881 the Isle of Man was the first country to grant women the right to vote in national elections. Her father, Robert Goulden, was a self-made man — working his way from errand boy to manufacturer — from a humble Manchester family with its own background of political activity. Robert's mother, a fustian cutter, worked with the Anti-Corn Law League, and his father was press-ganged into the Royal Navy and present at the Peterloo massacre, when cavalry charged and broke up a crowd demanding parliamentary reform.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The Gouldens' first son died at the age of three, but they had 10 other children; Emmeline was the eldest of five daughters. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Seedley, where her father had co-founded a small business. He was also active in local politics, serving for several years on the Salford town council. He was an enthusiastic supporter of dramatic organisations including the Manchester Athenaeum and the Dramatic Reading Society. He owned a theatre in Salford for several years, where he played the leads in several Shakespeare plays. Goulden absorbed an appreciation of drama and theatrics from her father, which she used later in social activism. The Gouldens included their children in social activism. As part of the movement to end U.S. slavery, Robert welcomed American abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher when he visited Manchester. Sophia used the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin", written by Beecher's sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, as a regular source of bedtime stories for her sons and daughters. In her 1914 autobiography "My Own Story", Goulden recalls visiting a bazaar at a young age to collect money for newly freed slaves in the U.S.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Emmeline began to read books when she was very young, with one source claiming that she was reading as early as the age of three. She read the "Odyssey" at the age of nine and enjoyed the works of John Bunyan, especially his 1678 story "The Pilgrim's Progress". Another of her favourite books was Thomas Carlyle's three-volume treatise "", and she later said the work "remained all [her] life a source of inspiration". Despite her avid consumption of books, however, she was not given the educational advantages enjoyed by her brothers. Their parents believed that the girls needed most to learn the art of "making home attractive" and other skills desired by potential husbands. The Gouldens deliberated carefully about future plans for their sons' education, but they expected their daughters to marry young and avoid paid work. Although they supported women's suffrage and the general advancement of women in society, the Gouldens believed their daughters incapable of the goals of their male peers. Feigning sleep one evening as her father came into her bedroom, Goulden heard him pause and say to himself, "What a pity she wasn't born a lad."


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: It was through her parents' interest in women's suffrage that Goulden was first introduced to the subject. Her mother received and read the "Women's Suffrage Journal", and Goulden grew fond of its editor Lydia Becker. At the age of 14, she returned home from school one day to find her mother on her way to a public meeting about women's voting rights. After learning that Becker would be speaking, she insisted on attending. Goulden was enthralled by Becker's address and later wrote, "I left the meeting a conscious and confirmed suffragist." A year later, she arrived in Paris to attend the "École Normale de Neuilly". The school provided its female pupils with classes in chemistry and bookkeeping, in addition to traditionally feminine arts such as embroidery. Her roommate was Noémie, the daughter of Victor Henri Rochefort, who had been imprisoned in New Caledonia for his support of the Paris Commune. The girls shared tales of their parents' political exploits and remained good friends for years. Goulden was so fond of Noémie and the school that she returned with her sister Mary Jane as a parlour boarder after graduating. Noémie had married a Swiss painter and quickly found a suitable French husband for her English friend. When Robert refused to provide a dowry for his daughter, the man withdrew his offer of marriage and Goulden returned, miserable, to Manchester.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In the autumn of 1878, at the age of 20, Goulden met and began a relationship with Richard Pankhurst, a barrister who had advocated women's suffrage – and other causes, including freedom of speech and education reform – for years. Richard, 44 years old when they met, had earlier resolved to remain a bachelor to better serve the public. Their mutual affection was powerful, but the couple's happiness was diminished by the death of his mother the following year. Sophia Jane Goulden chastised her daughter for "throwing herself" at Richard and advised her without success to exhibit more aloofness. Emmeline suggested to Richard that they avoid the legal formalities of marriage by entering into a free union; he objected on the grounds that she would be excluded from political life as an unmarried woman. He noted that his colleague Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy had faced social condemnation before she formalised her marriage to Ben Elmy. Emmeline Goulden agreed, and they had their wedding in St Luke's Church, Pendleton on 18 December 1879.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: During the 1880s, living at the Goulden cottage with her parents in Seedley, then at 1 Drayton Terrace Chester Rd Old Trafford (1881 census Stretford) opposite Richards parents home, Emmeline Pankhurst tended to her husband and children, but still devoted time to political activities. Although she gave birth to five children in ten years, both she and Richard believed that she should not be "a household machine". Thus a butler was hired to help with the children as Pankhurst involved herself with the Women's Suffrage Society. Their daughter Christabel was born on 22 September 1880, less than a year after the wedding. Pankhurst gave birth to another daughter, Estelle Sylvia, in 1882 and their son Henry Francis Robert, nicknamed Frank, in 1884. Soon afterwards Richard Pankhurst left the Liberal Party. He began expressing more radical socialist views and argued a case in court against several wealthy businessmen. These actions roused Robert Goulden's ire and the mood in the house became tense. In 1885, the Pankhursts moved to Chorlton-on-Medlock, and their daughter Adela was born. They moved to London the following year, where Richard ran unsuccessfully for election as a Member of Parliament and Pankhurst opened a small fabric shop called Emerson and Company, together with her sister Mary Jane.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In 1888, Pankhurst's son Frank developed diphtheria. He died on 11 September. Overwhelmed with grief, Pankhurst commissioned two portraits of the dead boy but was unable to look at them and hid them in a bedroom cupboard. The family concluded that a faulty drainage system at the back of their house had caused their son's illness. Pankhurst blamed the poor conditions of the neighbourhood, and the family moved to a more affluent middle class district at Russell Square. She was soon pregnant once more and declared that the child was "Frank coming again". She gave birth to a son on 7 July 1889 and named him Henry Francis in honour of his deceased brother.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Pankhurst made their Russell Square home into a centre for political intellectuals and activists, including, "Socialists, Protesters, Anarchists, Suffragists, Free Thinkers, Radicals and Humanitarians of all schools." She took pleasure in decorating the house – especially with furnishings from Asia – and clothing the family in tasteful apparel. Her daughter Sylvia later wrote: "Beauty and appropriateness in her dress and household appointments seemed to her at all times an indispensable setting to public work."


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The Pankhursts hosted a variety of guests including Indian MP Dadabhai Naoroji, socialist activists Herbert Burrows and Annie Besant, and French anarchist Louise Michel.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In 1888, Britain's first nationwide coalition of groups advocating women's right to vote, the National Society for Women's Suffrage (NSWS), split after a majority of members decided to accept organisations affiliated with political parties. Angry at this decision, some of the group's leaders, including Lydia Becker and Millicent Fawcett, stormed out of the meeting and created an alternative organisation committed to the "old rules," called the Great College Street Society after the location of its headquarters. Pankhurst aligned herself with the "new rules" group, which became known as the Parliament Street Society (PSS). Some members of the PSS favoured a piecemeal approach to gaining the vote. Because it was often assumed that married women did not need the vote since their husbands "voted for them," some PSS members felt that the vote for single women and widows was a practical step along the path to full suffrage. When the reluctance within the PSS to advocate on behalf of married women became clear, Pankhurst and her husband helped organise another new group dedicated to voting rights for all women – married and unmarried.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The inaugural meeting of the Women's Franchise League (WFL) was held on 25 July 1889, at the Pankhurst home in Russell Square. Early members of the WFL included Josephine Butler, leader of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts; the Pankhursts' friend Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme-Elmy; and Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch, daughter of US suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The WFL was considered a radical organisation, since in addition to women's suffrage it supported equal rights for women in the areas of divorce and inheritance. It also advocated trade unionism and sought alliances with socialist organisations. The more conservative group that emerged from the NSWS split spoke out against what they called the "extreme left" wing of the movement. The WFL reacted by ridiculing the "Spinster Suffrage party" and insisting that a wider assault on social inequity was required. The group's radicalism caused some members to leave; both Blatch and Elmy resigned from the WFL. The group fell apart one year later.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Pankhurst's shop never succeeded and he had trouble attracting business in London. With the family's finances in jeopardy, Richard travelled regularly to northwest England, where most of his clients were. In 1893 the Pankhursts closed the store and returned to Manchester. They stayed for several months in the seaside town of Southport, then moved briefly to the village of Disley and finally settled into a house in Manchester's Victoria Park. The girls were enrolled in Manchester Girls' High School, where they felt confined by the large student population and strictly regimented schedule.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Pankhurst began to work with several political organisations, distinguishing herself for the first time as an activist in her own right and gaining respect in the community. One biographer describes this period as her "emergence from Richard's shadow." In addition to her work on behalf of women's suffrage, she became active with the Women's Liberal Federation (WLF), an auxiliary of the Liberal Party. She quickly grew disenchanted with the group's moderate positions, however, especially its unwillingness to support Irish Home Rule and the aristocratic leadership of Archibald Primrose.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In 1888 Pankhurst had met and befriended Keir Hardie, a socialist from Scotland. He was elected to parliament in 1891 and two years later helped to create the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Excited about the range of issues which the ILP pledged to confront, Pankhurst resigned from the WFL and applied to join the ILP. The local branch refused her admission on the grounds of her sex, but she eventually joined the ILP nationally. Christabel later wrote of her mother's enthusiasm for the party and its organising efforts: "In this movement she hoped there might be the means of righting every political and social wrong."


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: One of her first activities with the ILP found Pankhurst distributing food to poor men and women through the Committee for the Relief of the Unemployed. In December 1894 she was elected to the position of Poor Law Guardian in Chorlton-on-Medlock. She was appalled by the conditions she witnessed first-hand in the Manchester workhouse:Pankhurst immediately began to change these conditions, and established herself as a successful voice of reform on the Board of Guardians. Her chief opponent was a passionate man named Mainwaring, known for his rudeness. Recognising that his loud anger was hurting his chances of persuading those aligned with Pankhurst, he kept a note nearby during meetings: "Keep your temper!"


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: After helping her husband with another unsuccessful parliamentary campaign, Pankhurst faced legal troubles in 1896 when she and two men violated a court order against ILP meetings at Boggart Hole Clough. With Richard's volunteering his time as legal counsel, they refused to pay fines, and the two men spent a month in prison. The punishment was never ordered for Pankhurst, however, possibly because the magistrate feared public backlash against the imprisonment of a woman so respected in the community. Asked by an ILP reporter if she were prepared to spend time in prison, Pankhurst replied: "Oh, yes, quite. It wouldn't be so very dreadful, you know, and it would be a valuable experience." Although ILP meetings were eventually permitted, the episode was a strain on Pankhurst's health and caused loss of income for their family.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: During the struggle at Boggart Hole Clough, Richard Pankhurst began to experience severe stomach pains. He had developed a gastric ulcer, and his health deteriorated in 1897. The family moved briefly to Mobberley, with the hope that country air would help his condition. He soon felt well again, and the family returned to Manchester in the autumn. In the summer of 1898, he suffered a sudden relapse. Emmeline Pankhurst had taken their oldest daughter Christabel to Corsier, Switzerland, to visit her old friend Noémie. A telegram arrived from Richard, reading: "I am not well. Please come home, my love." Leaving Christabel with Noémie, Pankhurst returned immediately to England. On 5 July, while on a train from London to Manchester, she noticed a newspaper announcing the death of Richard Pankhurst.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The loss of her husband left Pankhurst with new responsibilities and a significant amount of debt. She moved the family to a smaller house at 62 Nelson Street, resigned from the Board of Guardians, and was given a paid position as Registrar of Births and Deaths in Chorlton. This work gave her more insight into the conditions of women in the region. She wrote in her autobiography: "They used to tell me their stories, dreadful stories some of them, and all of them pathetic with that patient and uncomplaining pathos of poverty." Her observations of the differences between the lives of men and women, for example in relation to illegitimacy, reinforced her conviction that women needed the right to vote before their conditions could improve. In 1900 she was elected to the Manchester School Board and saw new examples of women suffering unequal treatment and limited opportunities. During this time she also re-opened her store, with the hope that it would provide additional income for the family.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The individual identities of the Pankhurst children began to emerge around the time of their father's death. Before long they were all involved in the struggle for women's suffrage. Christabel enjoyed a privileged status among the daughters, as Sylvia noted in 1931: "She was our mother's favourite; we all knew it, and I, for one, never resented the fact." Christabel did not share her mother's fervour for political work, however, until she befriended the suffrage activists Esther Roper and Eva Gore-Booth. She soon became involved with the suffrage movement and joined her mother at speaking events. Sylvia took lessons from a respected local artist and soon received a scholarship to the Manchester School of Art. She went on to study art in Florence and Venice. The younger children, Adela and Harry, had difficulty finding a path for their studies. Adela was sent to a local boarding school, where she was cut off from her friends and contracted head lice. Harry also had difficulty at school; he suffered from measles and vision problems.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: By 1903, Pankhurst believed that years of moderate speeches and promises about women's suffrage from members of parliament (MPs) had yielded no progress. Although suffrage bills in 1870, 1886, and 1897 had shown promise, each was defeated. She doubted that political parties, with their many agenda items, would ever make women's suffrage a priority. She even broke with the ILP when it refused to focus on Votes for Women. It was necessary to abandon the patient tactics of existing advocacy groups, she believed, in favour of more militant actions. Thus on 10 October 1903 Pankhurst and several colleagues founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organisation open only to women and focused on direct action to win the vote. "Deeds," she wrote later, "not words, was to be our permanent motto."


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The group's early militancy took non-violent forms. In addition to making speeches and gathering petition signatures, the WSPU organised rallies and published a newsletter called "Votes for Women." The group also convened a series of "Women's Parliaments" for example, in Caxton Hall, to coincide with official government sessions. When a bill for women's suffrage was filibustered on 12 May 1905, Pankhurst and other WSPU members began a loud protest outside the Parliament building. Police immediately forced them away from the building, where they regrouped and demanded passage of the bill. Although the bill was never resurrected, Pankhurst considered it a successful demonstration of militancy's power to capture attention. Pankhurst declared in 1906: "We are at last recognized as a political party; we are now in the swim of politics, and are a political force."


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Before long, all three of her daughters became active with the WSPU. Christabel was arrested after spitting at a policeman during a meeting of the Liberal Party in October 1905; Adela and Sylvia were arrested a year later during a protest outside Parliament. Pankhurst was arrested for the first time in February 1908, when she tried to enter Parliament to deliver a protest resolution to Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. She was charged with obstruction and sentenced to six weeks in prison. She spoke out against the conditions of her confinement, including vermin, meagre food, and the "civilised torture of solitary confinement and absolute silence" to which she and others were ordered. Pankhurst saw imprisonment as a means to publicise the urgency of women's suffrage; in June 1909 she struck a police officer twice in the face to ensure she would be arrested. Pankhurst was arrested seven times before women's suffrage was approved. During her trial on 21 October 1908 she told the court: "We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers."


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The exclusive focus of the WSPU on votes for women was another hallmark of its militancy. While other organizations agreed to work with individual political parties, the WSPU insisted on separating itself from – and in many cases opposing – parties which did not make women's suffrage a priority. The group protested against all candidates belonging to the party of the ruling government since it refused to pass women's suffrage legislation. This brought them into immediate conflict with Liberal Party organisers, particularly since many Liberal candidates supported women's suffrage. (One early target of WSPU opposition was future Prime Minister Winston Churchill; his opponent attributed Churchill's defeat in part to "those ladies who are sometimes laughed at.")


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Members of the WSPU were sometimes heckled and derided for spoiling elections for Liberal candidates. On 18 January 1908, Pankhurst and her associate Nellie Martel were attacked by an all-male crowd of Liberal supporters who blamed the WSPU for costing them a recent by-election to the Conservative candidate. The men threw clay, rotten eggs, and stones packed in snow; the women were beaten and Pankhurst's ankle was severely bruised. Similar tensions later formed with Labour. Until party leaders made the vote for women a priority, however, the WSPU vowed to continue its militant activism. Pankhurst and others in the union saw party politics as distracting to the goal of women's suffrage and criticised other organisations for putting party loyalty ahead of women's votes.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: As the WSPU gained recognition and notoriety for its actions, Pankhurst resisted efforts to democratise the organisation itself. In 1907 a small group of members led by Teresa Billington-Greig called for more involvement from the rank-and-file suffragettes at the union's annual meetings. In response, Pankhurst announced at a WSPU meeting that elements of the organisation's constitution relating to decision-making were void and cancelled the annual meetings. She also insisted that a small committee chosen by the members in attendance be allowed to co-ordinate WSPU activities. Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel were chosen (along with Mabel Tuke and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence) as members of the new committee. Frustrated, several members including Billington-Greig and Charlotte Despard quit to form their own organisation, the Women's Freedom League. In her 1914 autobiography Pankhurst dismissed criticism of the WSPU's leadership structure:if at any time a member, or a group of members, loses faith in our policy; if any one begins to suggest that some other policy ought to be substituted, or if she tries to confuse the issue by adding other policies, she ceases at once to be a member. Autocratic? Quite so. But, you may object, a suffrage organisation ought to be democratic. Well the members of the W. S. P. U. do not agree with you. We do not believe in the effectiveness of the ordinary suffrage organisation. The W. S. P. U. is not hampered by a complexity of rules. We have no constitution and by-laws; nothing to be amended or tinkered with or quarrelled over at an annual meeting ... The W. S. P. U. is simply a suffrage army in the field.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: On 26 June 1908, 500,000 activists rallied in Hyde Park to demand votes for women; Asquith and leading MPs responded with indifference. Angered by this intransigence and abusive police activity, some WSPU members increased the severity of their actions. Soon after the rally, twelve women gathered in Parliament Square and tried to deliver speeches for women's suffrage. Police officers seized several of the speakers and pushed them into a crowd of opponents who had gathered nearby. Frustrated, two WSPU members – Edith New and Mary Leigh – went to 10 Downing Street and hurled rocks at the windows of the Prime Minister's home. They insisted their act was independent of the WSPU command, but Pankhurst expressed her approval of the action. When a magistrate sentenced New and Leigh to two months' imprisonment, Pankhurst reminded the court of how various male political agitators had broken windows to win legal and civil rights throughout Britain's history.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In 1909 the hunger strike was added to the WSPU's repertoire of resistance. On 24 June Marion Wallace Dunlop was arrested for writing an excerpt from the Bill of Rights (1688 or 1689) on a wall in the House of Commons. Angered by the conditions of the jail, Dunlop went on a hunger strike. When it proved effective, fourteen women imprisoned for smashing windows began to fast. WSPU members soon became known around the country for holding prolonged hunger strikes to protest their incarceration. Prison authorities frequently force-fed the women, using tubes inserted through the nose or mouth. The painful techniques (which, in the case of mouth-feeding, required the use of steel gags to force the mouth open) brought condemnation from suffragists and medical professionals.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: These tactics caused some tension between the WSPU and more moderate organizations, which had coalesced into the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). That group's leader, Millicent Fawcett, originally hailed WSPU members for their courage and dedication to the cause. By 1912, however, she declared that hunger strikes were mere publicity stunts and that militant activists were "the chief obstacles in the way of the success of the suffrage movement in the House of Commons." The NUWSS refused to join a march of women's suffrage groups after demanding without success that the WSPU end its support of property destruction. Fawcett's sister Elizabeth Garrett Anderson later resigned from the WSPU for similar reasons.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Press coverage was mixed; many journalists noted that crowds of women responded positively to speeches by Pankhurst, while others condemned her radical approach to the issue. "The Daily News" urged her to endorse a more moderate approach, and other press outlets condemned the breaking of windows by WSPU members. In 1906 "Daily Mail" journalist Charles Hands referred to militant women using the diminutive term "suffragette" (rather than the standard "suffragist"). Pankhurst and her allies seized the term as their own and used it to differentiate themselves from moderate groups.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The last half of the century's first decade was a time of sorrow, loneliness, and constant work for Pankhurst. In 1907 she sold her home in Manchester and began an itinerant lifestyle, moving from place to place as she spoke and marched for women's suffrage. She stayed with friends and in hotels, carrying her few possessions in suitcases. Although she was energized by the struggle–and found joy in giving energy to others– her constant travelling meant separation from her children, especially Christabel, who had become the national coordinator of the WSPU. In 1909, as Pankhurst planned a speaking tour of the United States, Henry was paralyzed after his spinal cord became inflamed. She hesitated to leave the country while he was ill, but she needed money to pay for his treatment and the tour promised to be lucrative. On her return from a successful tour, she sat by Henry's bedside as he died on 5 January 1910. Five days later she buried her son, then spoke before 5,000 people in Manchester. Liberal Party supporters who had come to heckle her remained quiet as she addressed the crowd.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: After the Liberal losses in the 1910 elections, ILP member and journalist Henry Brailsford helped organise a Conciliation Committee for Women's Suffrage, which gathered 54 MPs from various parties. The group's Conciliation Bill looked to be a narrowly defined but still significant possibility to achieve the vote for some women. Thus the WSPU agreed to suspend its support for window-breaking and hunger strikes while it was being negotiated. When it became clear that the bill would not pass, Pankhurst declared: "If the Bill, in spite of our efforts, is killed by the Government, then ... I have to say there is an end to the truce." When it was defeated, Pankhurst led a protest march of 300 women to Parliament Square on 18 November. They were met with aggressive police response, directed by Home Secretary Winston Churchill: officers punched the marchers, twisted arms, and pulled on women's breasts. Although Pankhurst was allowed to enter Parliament, Prime Minister Asquith refused to meet her. The incident became known as Black Friday. Her sister Mary Jane, who had attended the protest, too, was arrested for the third time, a few days later. She was sentenced to a month of imprisonment. On Christmas Day she died at the home of their brother Herbert Goulden, two days after her release.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: As subsequent Conciliation Bills were introduced, WSPU leaders advocated a halt to militant tactics. Aileen Preston was appointed as Pankhurst's driver in April 1911, to drive her around the country to help spread the suffrage message.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In March 1912, the second bill was in jeopardy and Pankhurst joined a fresh outbreak of window-smashing. Extensive property damage led police to raid the WSPU offices. Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence were tried at the Old Bailey and convicted of conspiracy to commit property damage. Christabel, who by 1912 was the chief coordinator for the organisation, was also wanted by police. She fled to Paris, where she directed WSPU strategy in exile. Inside Holloway Prison, Emmeline Pankhurst staged her first hunger strike to improve conditions for other suffragettes in nearby cells; she was quickly joined by Pethick-Lawrence and other WSPU members. She described in her autobiography the trauma caused by force-feeding during the strike: "Holloway became a place of horror and torment. Sickening scenes of violence took place almost every hour of the day, as the doctors went from cell to cell performing their hideous office." When prison officials tried to enter her cell, Pankhurst raised a clay jug over her head and announced: "If any of you dares so much as to take one step inside this cell I shall defend myself."


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Pankhurst was spared further force-feeding attempts after this incident, but she continued to violate the law and – when imprisoned – starve herself in protest. During the following two years she was arrested numerous times but was frequently released after several days because of her ill-health. Later, the Asquith government enacted the Cat and Mouse Act, which allowed similar releases for other suffragettes facing ill-health due to hunger strikes. Prison officials recognised the potential public relations disaster that would erupt if the popular WSPU leader were force-fed or allowed to suffer extensively in jail. Still, police officers arrested her during talks and as she marched. She tried to evade police harassment by wearing disguises and eventually the WSPU established a jujutsu-trained female bodyguard squad to physically protect her against the police. She and other escorts were targeted by police, resulting in violent scuffles as officers tried to detain Pankhurst.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In 1912, WSPU members adopted arson as another tactic to win the vote. After Prime Minister Asquith had visited the Theatre Royal in Dublin, suffragette activists Gladys Evans, Lizzie Baker, Mary Leigh, and Mabel Capper attempted to cause an explosion using gunpowder and benzine, which resulted in minimal damage. During the same evening, Mary Leigh threw an axe at the carriage containing John Redmond (leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party), the Lord Mayor, and Asquith.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Over the next two years women set fire to a refreshments building in Regent's Park, an orchid house at Kew Gardens, pillar boxes, and a railway carriage. Emily Davison threw herself under the Kings Horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913. Her funeral drew 55,000 attendees along the streets and at the funeral. This gave significant publicity to the movement.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Although Pankhurst confirmed that these women had not been commanded by her or Christabel, they both assured the public that they supported the arsonist suffragettes. There were similar incidents around the country. One WSPU member, for example, put a small hatchet into the Prime Minister's carriage inscribed with the words: "Votes for Women," and other suffragettes used acid to burn the same slogan into golf courses used by MPs. In 1914, Mary Richardson slashed the Velasquez painting "Rokeby Venus" to protest against Pankhurst's imprisonment.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The WSPU's approval of property destruction led to the departure of several important members. The first were Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and her husband Frederick. They had long been integral members of the group's leadership but found themselves in conflict with Christabel about the wisdom of such volatile tactics. After returning from a vacation in Canada they found that Pankhurst had expelled them from the WSPU. The pair found the decision appalling, but to avoid a schism in the movement they continued to praise Pankhurst and the organisation in public. Around the same time, Emmeline's daughter Adela left the group. She disapproved of WSPU endorsement of property destruction and felt that a heavier emphasis on socialism was necessary. Adela's relationship with her family – especially Christabel – was also strained as a result.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: The deepest rift in the Pankhurst family came in November 1913 when Sylvia spoke at a meeting of socialists and trade unionists in support of trade union organiser Jim Larkin. She had been working with the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), a local branch of the WSPU which had a close relationship with socialists and organised labour. The close connection to labour groups and Sylvia's appearance on stage with Frederick Pethick-Lawrence – who also addressed the crowd – convinced Christabel that her sister was organising a group that might challenge the WSPU in the suffrage movement. The dispute became public, and members of groups including the WSPU, ILP, and ELFS braced themselves for a showdown.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In January Sylvia was summoned to Paris, where Emmeline and Christabel were waiting. Their mother had just returned from another tour of the US, and Sylvia had just been released from prison. All three women were exhausted and stressed, which added considerably to the tension. In her 1931 book "The Suffrage Movement" Sylvia describes Christabel as an unreasonable figure, haranguing her for refusing to toe the WSPU line:She turned to me. "You have your own ideas. We do not want that; we want all our women to take their instructions and walk in step like an army!" Too tired, too ill to argue, I made no reply. I was oppressed by a sense of tragedy, grieved by her ruthlessness. Her glorification of autocracy seemed to me remote indeed from the struggle we were waging, the grim fight even now proceeding in the cells. I thought of many others who had been thrust aside for some minor difference.With their mother's blessing, Christabel ordered Sylvia's group to dissociate from the WSPU. Pankhurst tried to persuade the ELFS to remove the word "suffragettes" from its name, since it was inextricably linked to the WSPU. When Sylvia refused, her mother switched to fierce anger in a letter:You are unreasonable, always have been & I fear always will be. I suppose you were made so! ... Had you chosen a name which we could approve we could have done much to launch you & advertise your society by name. Now you must take your own way of doing so. I am sorry but you make your own difficulties by an incapacity to look at situations from other people's point of view as well as your own. Perhaps in time you will learn the lessons that we all have to learn in life.Adela, unemployed and unsure of her future, had become a worry for Pankhurst as well. She decided that Adela should move to Australia, and paid for her relocation. They never saw one another again.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In November 1917 the WSPU's weekly newspaper announced that the WSPU was to become the Women's Party. Twelve months later on Tuesday 19 November at the Queen's Hall in London Emmeline Pankhurst said that her daughter Christabel would be their candidate at the forthcoming General Election, the first at which women could stand as candidates. They didn't say which constituency they would fight but a few days later Westbury in Wiltshire was identified. Emmeline lobbied Prime Minister David Lloyd George to ensure Christabel would have coalition backing. However, as these discussions were taking place the Pankhurst's switched their attention to Smethwick in Staffordshire. The Coalition had already settled on a local candidate, Major Samuel Nock Thompson, but Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, was persuaded to ask Thompson to withdraw. Significantly, Christabel was not issued with a formal letter of support from the two leaders, the Coalition Coupon. Christabel then had a straight fight with the Labour candidate John Davison and lost by 775 votes. The Women's Party fought no other elections and closed soon after.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: When the First World War began in August 1914, Emmeline and Christabel considered that the threat posed by Germany was a danger to all humanity, and that the British government needed the support of all men. They persuaded the WSPU to halt all militant suffrage activities until fighting on the European mainland ended. It was no time for dissent or agitation; Christabel wrote later: "This was national militancy. As Suffragists we could not be pacifists at any price." A truce with the government was established, all WSPU prisoners were released, and Christabel returned to London. Emmeline and Christabel set the WSPU into motion on behalf of the war effort. In her first speech after returning to Britain, Christabel warned of the "German Peril". She urged the gathered women to follow the example of their French sisters, who – while the men fought – "are able to keep the country going, to get in the harvest, to carry on the industries". Emmeline tried to shame men in to volunteering for the front lines.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Sylvia and Adela, meanwhile, did not share their mother's enthusiasm for the war. As committed pacifists, they rejected the WSPU's support for the government. Sylvia's socialist perspective convinced her that the war was another example of capitalist oligarchs exploiting poor soldiers and workers. Adela, meanwhile, spoke against the war in Australia and made public her opposition to conscription. In a short letter, Emmeline told Sylvia: "I am ashamed to know where you and Adela stand." She had a similar impatience for dissent within the WSPU; when long-time member Mary Leigh asked a question during a meeting in October 1915, Pankhurst replied: "That woman is a pro German and should leave the hall. ... I denounce you as a pro German and wish to forget that such a person ever existed." Some WSPU members were outraged by this sudden rigid devotion to the government, the leadership's perceived abandonment of efforts to win the vote for women, and questions about how funds collected on behalf of suffrage were being managed with regard to the organisation's new focus. Two groups split from the WSPU: The Suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union (SWSPU) and the Independent Women's Social and Political Union (IWSPU), each dedicated to maintaining pressure toward women's suffrage.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Pankhurst put the same energy and determination she had previously applied to women's suffrage into patriotic advocacy of the war effort. She organised rallies, toured constantly delivering speeches, and lobbied the government to help women enter the work force while men were overseas fighting. Another issue which concerned her greatly at the time was the plight of so-called war babies, children born to single mothers whose fathers were on the front lines. Pankhurst established an adoption home at Campden Hill designed to employ the Montessori method of childhood education. Some women criticised Pankhurst for offering relief to parents of children born out of wedlock, but she declared indignantly that the welfare of children–whose suffering she had seen firsthand as a Poor Law Guardian–was her only concern. Due to lack of funds, however, the home was soon turned over to Princess Alice. Pankhurst herself adopted four children, whom she renamed Kathleen King, Flora Mary Gordon, Joan Pembridge and Elizabeth Tudor. They lived in London, where–for the first time in many years–she had a permanent home, at Holland Park. Asked how, at the age of 57 and with no steady income, she could take on the burden of bringing up four more children, Pankhurst replied: "My dear, I wonder I didn't take forty."


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Pankhurst visited North America in 1916 together with the former Secretary of State for Serbia, Čedomilj Mijatović, whose nation had been at the centre of fighting at the start of the war. They toured the United States and Canada, raising money and urging the US government to support Britain and its Canadian and other allies. Two years later, after the US entered the war, Pankhurst returned to the United States, encouraging suffragettes there – who had not suspended their militancy – to support the war effort by sidelining activities related to the vote. She also spoke about her fears of communist insurgency, which she considered a grave threat to Russian democracy.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: By June 1917 the Russian Revolution had strengthened the Bolsheviks, who urged an end to the war. Pankhurst's translated autobiography had been read widely in Russia, and she saw an opportunity to put pressure on the Russian people. She hoped to convince them not to accept Germany's conditions for peace, which she saw as a potential defeat for Britain and Russia. UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George agreed to sponsor her trip to Russia, which she took in June. She told one crowd: "I came to Petrograd with a prayer from the English nation to the Russian nation, that you may continue the war on which depends the face of civilisation and freedom." Press response was divided between left and right wings; the former depicted her as a tool of capitalism, while the latter praised her devout patriotism.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In August she met with Alexander Kerensky, the Russian Prime Minister. Although she had been active with the socialist-leaning ILP in years past, Pankhurst had begun to see leftist politics as disagreeable, an attitude which intensified while she was in Russia. The meeting was uncomfortable for both parties; he felt that she was unable to appreciate the class-based conflict driving Russian policy at the time. He concluded by telling her that English women had nothing to teach women in Russia. She later told the "New York Times" that he was the "biggest fraud of modern times" and that his government could "destroy civilisation."


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: When she returned from Russia, Pankhurst was delighted to find that women's right to vote was finally on its way to becoming a reality. The 1918 Representation of the People Act removed property restrictions on men's suffrage and granted the vote to women over the age of 30 (with several restrictions). As suffragists and suffragettes celebrated and prepared for its imminent passage, a new schism erupted: should women's political organisations join forces with those established by men? Many socialists and moderates supported unity of the sexes in politics, but Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst saw the best hope in remaining separate. They reinvented the WSPU as the Women's Party, still open only to women. Women, they said, "can best serve the nation by keeping clear of men's party political machinery and traditions, which, by universal consent, leave so much to be desired." The party favoured equal marriage laws, equal pay for equal work, and equal job opportunities for women. These were matters for the post-war era, however. While the fighting continued the Women's Party demanded no compromise in the defeat of Germany; the removal from government of anyone with family ties to Germany or pacifist attitudes; and shorter work hours to forestall labour strikes. This last plank in the party's platform was meant to discourage potential interest in Bolshevism, about which Pankhurst was increasingly anxious.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In the years after the 1918 Armistice, Pankhurst continued to promote her nationalist vision of British unity. She maintained a focus on women's empowerment, but her days of fighting with government officialdom were over. She defended the presence and reach of the British Empire: "Some talk about the Empire and Imperialism as if it were something to decry and something to be ashamed of. [I]t is a great thing to be the inheritors of an Empire like ours ... great in territory, great in potential wealth. ... If we can only realise and use that potential wealth we can destroy thereby poverty, we can remove and destroy ignorance." For years she travelled around England and North America, rallying support for the British Empire and warning audiences about the dangers of Bolshevism. After the war she lived in Bermuda and America for a couple of years.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Emmeline Pankhurst also became active in political campaigning again when a bill was passed allowing women to run for the House of Commons. Many Women's Party members urged Pankhurst to stand for election, but she insisted that Christabel was a better choice. She campaigned tirelessly for her daughter, lobbying Prime Minister Lloyd George for his support and at one point delivering a passionate speech in the rain. Christabel lost by a very slim margin to the Labour Party candidate, and the recount showed a difference of 775 votes. One biographer called it "the bitterest disappointment of Emmeline's life." The Women's Party withered from existence soon afterward.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: As a result of her many trips to North America, Pankhurst became fond of Canada, stating in an interview that "there seems to be more equality between men and women [there] than in any other country I know." In 1922 she applied for Canadian "permission to land" (a prerequisite to status as a "British Subject with Canadian Domicile") and rented a house in Toronto, where she moved with her four adopted children. She became active with the Canadian National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases (CNCCVD), which worked against the sexual double standard which Pankhurst considered particularly harmful to women. During a tour of Bathurst, the mayor showed her a new building which would become the Home for Fallen Women. Pankhurst replied: "Ah! Where is your Home for Fallen Men?" Before long, however, she grew tired of long Canadian winters, and she ran out of money. She returned to England in late 1925.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Back in London Emmeline was visited by Sylvia, who had not seen her mother in years. Their politics were by now very different, and Sylvia was living, unmarried, with an Italian anarchist. Sylvia described a moment of familial affection when they met, followed by a sad distance between them. Emmeline's adopted daughter Mary, however, remembered the meeting differently. According to her version, Emmeline set her teacup down and walked silently out of the room, leaving Sylvia in tears. Christabel, meanwhile, had become a convert to Adventism and devoted much of her time to the church. The British press sometimes made light of the varied paths followed by the once indivisible family.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In 1926 Pankhurst joined the Conservative Party and two years later ran as a candidate for Parliament in Whitechapel and St George's. Her transformation from a fiery supporter of the ILP and window-smashing radical to an official Conservative Party member surprised many people. She replied succinctly: "My war experience and my experience on the other side of the Atlantic have changed my views considerably." Her biographers insist that the move was more complex; she was devoted to a programme of women's empowerment and anti-communism. Both the Liberal and Labour parties bore grudges for her work against them in the WSPU, and the Conservative Party had a victorious record after the war and a significant majority. Pankhurst may have joined the Conservative Party as much to secure the vote for women as from ideological affinity.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Emmeline Pankhurst's campaign for Parliament was pre-empted by her ill health and a final scandal involving Sylvia. The years of touring, lectures, imprisonment and hunger strikes had taken their toll; fatigue and illness became a regular part of Pankhurst's life. Even more painful, however, was the news in April 1928 that Sylvia had given birth out of wedlock. She had named the child Richard Keir Pethick Pankhurst, in memory of her father, her ILP comrade, and her colleagues from the WSPU respectively. Emmeline was further shocked to see a report from a newspaper in the US that declared that "Miss Pankhurst" – a title usually reserved for Christabel – boasted of her child being a triumph of "eugenics", since both parents were healthy and intelligent. In the article, Sylvia also spoke of her belief that "marriage without legal union" was the most sensible option for liberated women. These offences against the social dignity which Pankhurst had always valued devastated the elderly woman; to make matters worse, many people believed the "Miss Pankhurst" in newspaper headlines referred to Christabel. After hearing the news, Emmeline spent an entire day crying; her campaign for Parliament ended with the scandal.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: As her health deteriorated, Emmeline Pankhurst moved into a nursing home in Hampstead. She requested that she be treated by the doctor who attended to her during her hunger strikes. His use of the stomach pump had helped her feel better while in prison; her nurses were sure that the shock of such treatment would severely wound her, but Christabel felt obliged to carry out her mother's request. Before the procedure could be carried out, however, she fell into a critical condition from which none expected her to recover. On Thursday 14 June 1928 Pankhurst died, at the age of 69. She was interred in Brompton Cemetery in London.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: News of Emmeline Pankhurst's death was announced around the country, and extensively in North America. Her funeral service on 18 June 1928 was filled with her former WSPU colleagues and those who had worked beside her in various capacities. The "Daily Mail" described the procession as "like a dead general in the midst of a mourning army". Women wore WSPU sashes and ribbons, and the organisation's flag was carried alongside the Union Flag. Christabel and Sylvia appeared together at the service, the latter with her child. Adela did not attend. Press coverage around the world recognised her tireless work on behalf of women's right to vote – even if they did not agree on the value of her contributions. The "New York Herald Tribune" called her "the most remarkable political and social agitator of the early part of the twentieth century and the supreme protagonist of the campaign for the electoral enfranchisement of women."


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Shortly after the funeral, one of Pankhurst's bodyguards from her WSPU days, Catherine Marshall, began raising funds for a memorial statue. In spring 1930 her efforts bore fruit, and on 6 March her statue in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to and gesturing towards the Houses of Parliament, was unveiled. A crowd of radicals, former suffragettes, and national dignitaries gathered as former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin presented the memorial to the public. In his address, Baldwin declared: "I say with no fear of contradiction, that whatever view posterity may take, Mrs. Pankhurst has won for herself a niche in the Temple of Fame which will last for all time." Sylvia was the only Pankhurst daughter in attendance; Christabel, touring North America, sent a telegram which was read aloud. While planning the agenda for the day, Marshall had intentionally excluded Sylvia, who in her opinion had hastened Pankhurst's death. Historic England listed the statue as Grade II on 5 February 1970.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: A proposal to move the statue of Pankhurst away from the Houses of Parliament to the private Regent's University London in Regent's Park was submitted to Westminster City Council planning department in July 2018 by former Conservative MP Sir Neil Thorne. This proposal was withdrawn in September 2018 after widespread anger and a public campaign against it. The planning application received 896 comments, 887 of them objections. A 38 Degrees petition against the removal of the statue attracted 180,839 signatures. The Curator's Office at the Palace of Westminster commissioned a report into the plan to remove the statue. Published on 22 August 2018, it concluded 'The Memorial to Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst is of high significance, which is not fully recognised through its listing at Grade II. An application has been made to Historic England to upgrade the memorial to Grade II*. This is based on it having 'more than special interest', in terms of its unique history, its artistic quality and the importance of its setting next to the Houses of Parliament. This proposal to move the memorial from Victoria Tower Gardens to Regent's Park would cause substantial harm to the significance of the memorial, as well has harm to the Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square Conservation Area...The proposal to move the memorial, therefore, should not be granted planning permission or listed building consent.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: During the twentieth century Emmeline Pankhurst's value to the movement for women's suffrage was debated passionately, and no consensus was achieved. Her daughters Sylvia and Christabel weighed in with books, scornful and laudatory respectively, about their time in the struggle. Sylvia's 1931 book "The Suffrage Movement" describes her mother's political shift at the start of the First World War as the beginning of a betrayal of her family (especially her father) and the movement. It set the tone for much of the socialist and activist history written about the WSPU and particularly solidified Emmeline Pankhurst's reputation as an unreasonable autocrat. Christabel's ""Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote,"" released in 1959, paints her mother as generous and selfless to a fault, offering herself completely to the most noble causes. It provided a sympathetic counterpart to Sylvia's attacks and continued the polarised discussion; detached and objective assessment has rarely been a part of Pankhurst scholarship.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Recent biographies show that historians differ about whether Emmeline Pankhurst's militancy helped or hurt the movement; however, there is general agreement that the WSPU raised public awareness of the movement in ways that proved essential. Baldwin compared her to Martin Luther and Jean-Jacques Rousseau: individuals who were not the sum total of the movements in which they took part, but who nevertheless played crucial roles in struggles of social and political reform. In the case of Pankhurst, this reform took place in both intentional and unintentional ways. By defying the roles of wife and mother as the docile companion, Pankhurst paved the way for feminists who would later decry her support for empire and sustainable social values.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In 1987 one of her homes in Manchester was opened as the Pankhurst Centre, an all-women gathering space and museum. In 2002, Pankhurst was placed at number 27 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. In 2006, a blue plaque for Pankhurst and her daughter, Christabel was placed by English Heritage at 50 Clarendon Road, Notting Hill, London W11 3AD, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, where they had lived.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: In January 2016, following a public vote, it was announced that a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst by Hazel Reeves would be unveiled in Manchester in 2019, making her the first woman to be honoured with a statue in the city since Queen Victoria more than 100 years ago. This, in fact, happened on 14 December 2018, one hundred years after British women were first able to vote in the 1918 United Kingdom general election. Her name and image and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters including her daughters are etched on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London that was unveiled in 2018. One of the 'houses' at Wellacre Academy in Manchester is named after her.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Helen Pankhurst, the great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst and the granddaughter of Sylvia Pankhurst, works for women's rights. Along with her daughter, she founded Olympic Suffragettes, which campaigns on a number of women's rights issues.


title: Emmeline Pankhurst

text: Pankhurst has appeared in several works of popular culture. In the 1974 BBC television miniseries "Shoulder to Shoulder", Pankhurst is played by Siân Phillips. In the 2015 film "Suffragette", Pankhurst is played by Meryl Streep.


title: Wave function

text: A wave function in quantum physics is a mathematical description of the quantum state of an isolated quantum system. The wave function is a complex-valued probability amplitude, and the probabilities for the possible results of measurements made on the system can be derived from it. The most common symbols for a wave function are the Greek letters and (lower-case and capital psi, respectively).


title: Wave function

text: The wave function is a function of the degrees of freedom corresponding to some maximal set of commuting observables. Once such a representation is chosen, the wave function can be derived from the quantum state.


title: Wave function

text: For a given system, the choice of which commuting degrees of freedom to use is not unique, and correspondingly the domain of the wave function is also not unique. For instance, it may be taken to be a function of all the position coordinates of the particles over position space, or the momenta of all the particles over momentum space; the two are related by a Fourier transform. Some particles, like electrons and photons, have nonzero spin, and the wave function for such particles include spin as an intrinsic, discrete degree of freedom; other discrete variables can also be included, such as isospin. When a system has internal degrees of freedom, the wave function at each point in the continuous degrees of freedom (e.g., a point in space) assigns a complex number for "each" possible value of the discrete degrees of freedom (e.g., z-component of spin) – these values are often displayed in a column matrix (e.g., a column vector for a non-relativistic electron with spin ).


title: Wave function

text: According to the superposition principle of quantum mechanics, wave functions can be added together and multiplied by complex numbers to form new wave functions and form a Hilbert space. The inner product between two wave functions is a measure of the overlap between the corresponding physical states and is used in the foundational probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, the Born rule, relating transition probabilities to inner products. The Schrödinger equation determines how wave functions evolve over time, and a wave function behaves qualitatively like other waves, such as water waves or waves on a string, because the Schrödinger equation is mathematically a type of wave equation. This explains the name "wave function", and gives rise to wave–particle duality. However, the wave function in quantum mechanics describes a kind of physical phenomenon, still open to different interpretations, which fundamentally differs from that of classic mechanical waves.


title: Wave function

text: the squared modulus of the wave function, , is a real number interpreted as the probability density of measuring a particle as being at a given place – or having a given momentum – at a given time, and possibly having definite values for discrete degrees of freedom. The integral of this quantity, over all the system's degrees of freedom, must be 1 in accordance with the probability interpretation. This general requirement that a wave function must satisfy is called the "normalization condition". Since the wave function is complex-valued, only its relative phase and relative magnitude can be measured—its value does not, in isolation, tell anything about the magnitudes or directions of measurable observables; one has to apply quantum operators, whose eigenvalues correspond to sets of possible results of measurements, to the wave function and calculate the statistical distributions for measurable quantities.


title: Wave function

text: In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated the proportionality between the frequency formula_1 of a photon and its energy


title: Wave function

text: where formula_3 is the Planck constant. In 1923, De Broglie was the first to suggest that the relation now called the De Broglie relation, holds for "massive" particles, the chief clue being Lorentz invariance, and this can be viewed as the starting point for the modern development of quantum mechanics. The equations represent wave–particle duality for both massless and massive particles.


title: Wave function

text: In the 1920s and 1930s, quantum mechanics was developed using calculus and linear algebra. Those who used the techniques of calculus included Louis de Broglie, Erwin Schrödinger, and others, developing "wave mechanics". Those who applied the methods of linear algebra included Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and others, developing "matrix mechanics". Schrödinger subsequently showed that the two approaches were equivalent.


title: Wave function

text: In 1926, Schrödinger published the famous wave equation now named after him, the Schrödinger equation. This equation was based on classical conservation of energy using quantum operators and the de Broglie relations and the solutions of the equation are the wave functions for the quantum system. However, no one was clear on how to interpret it. At first, Schrödinger and others thought that wave functions represent particles that are spread out with most of the particle being where the wave function is large. This was shown to be incompatible with the elastic scattering of a wave packet (representing a particle) off a target; it spreads out in all directions.


title: Wave function

text: While a scattered particle may scatter in any direction, it does not break up and take off in all directions. In 1926, Born provided the perspective of probability amplitude. This relates calculations of quantum mechanics directly to probabilistic experimental observations. It is accepted as part of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. There are many other interpretations of quantum mechanics. In 1927, Hartree and Fock made the first step in an attempt to solve the "N"-body wave function, and developed the "self-consistency cycle": an iterative algorithm to approximate the solution. Now it is also known as the Hartree–Fock method. The Slater determinant and permanent (of a matrix) was part of the method, provided by John C. Slater.


title: Wave function

text: Schrödinger did encounter an equation for the wave function that satisfied relativistic energy conservation "before" he published the non-relativistic one, but discarded it as it predicted negative probabilities and negative energies. In 1927, Klein, Gordon and Fock also found it, but incorporated the electromagnetic interaction and proved that it was Lorentz invariant. De Broglie also arrived at the same equation in 1928. This relativistic wave equation is now most commonly known as the Klein–Gordon equation.


title: Wave function

text: In 1927, Pauli phenomenologically found a non-relativistic equation to describe spin-1/2 particles in electromagnetic fields, now called the Pauli equation. Pauli found the wave function was not described by a single complex function of space and time, but needed two complex numbers, which respectively correspond to the spin +1/2 and −1/2 states of the fermion. Soon after in 1928, Dirac found an equation from the first successful unification of special relativity and quantum mechanics applied to the electron, now called the Dirac equation. In this, the wave function is a "spinor" represented by four complex-valued components: two for the electron and two for the electron's antiparticle, the positron. In the non-relativistic limit, the Dirac wave function resembles the Pauli wave function for the electron. Later, other relativistic wave equations were found.