Emmeline Pankhurst did not politely request the vote for women. She smashed windows, set fires, organized bombings, endured forced feeding in prison, and told her followers that the argument of the broken pane of glass was the most valuable argument in modern politics. The suffragettes she led were not gentle petitioners — they were militants who waged a guerrilla campaign against the British state.

This episode traces Pankhurst from her Manchester upbringing through the founding of the WSPU, the escalating campaign of civil disobedience and property destruction, the Cat and Mouse Act, and the hard-won victory that came only after World War I forced Britain to reconsider what women could do.

• Pankhurst's political awakening and the founding of the Women's Social and Political Union
• The escalation from peaceful protest to w ...