This document was a speech given by Emmeline Pankhurst on October 17, 1912 at Royal Albert Hall in London. Pankhurst was an active militant suffragist and a founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union. In this speech, Pankhurst speaks of the critics of militancy and gives her response.

“We disregard your laws, gentlemen, we set the liberty and the dignity and the welfare of women above all such considerations, and we shall continue this war, as we have done in the past; and what sacrifice of property, or what injury to property accrues will not be our fault. It will be the fault of that Government who admit the justice of our demands, but refuses to concede them without the evidence, so they have told us, afforded to governments of the past, that those who asked for liberty were in earnest in their demands!”