"No vote, no golf!": How voters turned sports into a political battleground

In the early 20th century, sports were considered a male-only activity—by men, anyway. As Rachel Hewitt explains, the neglected history of women's participation in cricket, golf, wrestling, hockey and even mountaineering is intertwined with the rise of the suffrage movement.

On the afternoon of Saturday November 1, 1902, a group of men and women were working around Hampton Court Park and enjoying a friendly game of hockey. A local newspaper reported that "the weather was glorious", although the ground was muddy. The players included residents of the Hampton Court Palace apartments. It is likely that Princess Sophia Duleep Singh - a talented hockey player who played for both the palace team and the nearby East Mulsea Ladies Hockey Club and lived on the Hampton Court estate - was among them.

The daughter of the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire, Sophia Dulip Singh was born in England and is known today for her leading role in the British suffrage movement. As Anita Anand recounts in her 2015 biography Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary, Singh boycotted the 1911 census and refused to pay taxes or fees for dog and carry licenses because he did not accept "taxation without representation."

She joined suffrage protests and collected for the Kingston and regional branches of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and sold The Suffragette newspaper outside her home in Hampton Court. (Strictly speaking, suffragettes took direct, often militant action, while suffragettes used mostly peaceful methods in pursuing the vote for women. However, the two groups were often conflated in the 20th century.)

Although her work in support of women's suffrage is widely recognized, Singh's sporting activities are largely forgotten today. In fact, don't be afraid to talk about suffrage and female athletes alike. This is due in part to the lasting legacy of anti-suffrage propaganda that painted WSPU members as grumpy forks or wily old servants – tyrants at home, not athletes on the hockey field.

It also reflects a common and persistent misconception that sport - especially women's sport - is a mundane leisure pursuit irrelevant to politics. If such beliefs are still common today, why do we imagine that a century ago anyone was interested in the sport of suffrage?

However, these interwoven ideas—that suffragettes don't care much about sports, and that politics and sports shouldn't mix—obscure an important historical thread. For many women suffragettes, sport was truly meaningful, both personally and politically. When Singh declared that sport was the "birthright of every happy and healthy girl, whether princess or peasant," he was making a political point—reflecting the republican theory that English men and women once had liberties that were later taken away by cruel oppressors.

Singh was unrepentant in his love for sports. For example, the Pankhursts were members of the Clarion Cycling Club. Rosa May Billinghurst, a polio survivor, used a tricycle to participate in suffrage protests. Hilda Webb helped establish women's hockey in Ireland by throwing rocks at government buildings in association with the Irish Women's Union.

Vera Holm, chauffeur to various WSPU leaders, excelled in fly fishing. Also Lady Florence Dixie, an early lawyer and president of the British Women's Football Club - founded with London suffragist Nettie Hannibal - was also a keen hunter, mountaineer and explorer. Louisa Lumsden, president of the Aberdeen branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, was a champion of international girls' cricket. Across the Atlantic, Lucy Diggs Sloe championed the inclusion of black women in the US suffrage movement. He won the American Tennis Association tournament (founded for black tennis players) in 1917, the year the American Lawn Tennis Association banned black players.

In fact, by the early 20th century, the connection between suffrage and sports was so ingrained that it became a literary theme. A suffragette character in the French play Les Éclaireuses was "dressed in a short tweed hockey skirt". Another was a "climber lady" featured in Frank Saville's 1908 short story "The Suffragette". And spare a thought for the lyrical male narrator, weary of his girlfriend's devotion to sports and politics, saying, “The golf girl is bad enough, but oh! A right to vote!

In the 1880s and 1890s, men and women competed in mixed doubles tennis, cricket and hockey.

However, sometimes, the physiological and social advantages of men cause women to exercise in all-feminine environments. Mountaineer Lizzie LeBlond suggested that a women's alpine club could counter the male-dominated nature of mountaineering literature by building an "extensive and authoritative library" of women's writings on the subject. She also asked women to share women-specific information on "forming climbing parties, providing guides, travel gear and general accommodation."

In addition, a number of women's clubs and competitions emerged in the 1880s and 1890s, including the East Molesey Ladies' Hockey Club (which became England's first women's hockey team in 1887), the Irish Ladies' Hockey Association in 1894 and the 1895 England Women's Hockey Association.

Most of the surviving records relate to upper-class activities, but sports were equally important in the lives of urban and rural working-class women. The 1880s saw the end of the craze for female pedestrians, women and girls who earned money by briskly walking extraordinary distances. For example, in 1864, Emma Sharp was the first woman to walk 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours.

Researcher Sarah Elizabeth Cox has uncovered evidence of two black or mixed-heritage women known as the "Mills Sisters, or Muscular Servants from Mexico" boxing in East London in the 1880s.

Ladies' football matches and cricket matches were the main village fairs from the 17th century onwards – arm bowling is said to have been invented as a game by women. Working class women built a long legacy of sports.

As the new century dawned, physically active women experienced how exercise promoted health, strength, education, and camaraderie, as well as providing opportunities for travel, adventure, and meeting new people. They knew the company could bring money, fame and respect — and a chance at leadership. Lizzy Lou Blond refers to climbing as "work". Frederica Plunkett, one of the climbers, described how physical activity allowed her to escape the languid upper-class female lifestyle of neither "hard work" nor "play" and allowed her instead to exhaust herself and achieve "absolute rest" – like men.

Women's sports experiences also reflected their political and social ambitions. The ideal "new woman" of the late 19th century was well educated, wanted to work, and sought domestic equality. He was also fond of sports, especially cycling. The reasons for this were stated by American advocate Susan B. Anthony in 1895: "Cycling...has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world. It gives women a sense of freedom and self-confidence. Every time I see a woman riding a wheel, I stop and rejoice...the image of free and unfettered womanhood."

This passion for sports, often in practical ways, fueled the later women's suffrage movement. During the 1908 trial of the Pankhursts and Flora Drummond for inciting a riot, suffragette Evelyn Sharp described how she managed to evade a policeman: "It was like a hockey rush." Meanwhile, suffragettes used bicycles to distribute campaign literature.

However, between 1912 and 1914, voters' attitudes to sports changed significantly. These were the years when militant suffrage groups launched campaigns in which sports facilities were the main target. Initially, women approached male politicians while playing golf. They swarmed Asquith at the Aboyne Course and threw a worm at Winston Churchill at Balmoral Links.

This campaign was intensified in 1913. In just one weekend that February, at least 12 golf courses were damaged. Suffragettes used acid and weed killer to burn slogans into the grass, including "Justice before sport" and "No vote, no golf". They dug holes in the greens by placing suffrage magazines and posters. And they replaced golf course flags with slogans like "Women's War."

Women approached male politicians while playing golf. They heckled Herbert Asquith and threw a worm at Winston Churchill

Later that month, a golfer at Roehampton Golf Club interrupted two suspicious women who had fled and dropped a bag with incendiary contents that indicated they were planning to set fire to the gazebo. Police raided the flat of one Olive Hockin and found corrosive liquid, scissors, firecrackers, hammers, flints, fake car number plates and golf flags.

At a WSPU meeting soon after, a bemused attendee asked, "Why are the suffragettes destroying the golf links?" It was a reasonable question, after all, many suffragettes had grown up loving sports. Why were they now seeking to destroy the facilities in which they had first flourished?

An activist and leading member of the Five Suffrage Associations, McLaren (1852–1921) was an avid climber in his youth. Climbing was so synonymous with suffrage that in 1909, Votes for Women joked that the membership list of the Alpine Women's Club could serve as a recruitment directory. McLaren created a center of excellence for women's sports with a focus on hockey.

Trained as a physical culture instructor, Garrod (1872-1971) specialized in teaching Japanese martial arts to women and girls from the late 1890s, becoming the first recognized female jiu-jitsu instructor in Britain. She joined the Women's Liberation League in 1906 and offered jiu-jitsu classes to suffragettes as "a necessary safeguard for a woman who must defend herself" against the police. She trained the 30-strong female bodyguard unit that protected WSPU leaders from arrest.

Joining the suffrage movement in 1912, Hockin (1936-1881) took part in militant actions, including the attempted arson of Roehampton Golf Club. According to biographies, he was a trained artist who designed suffrage banners. Less well known is that Hockin was also a champion cross-country skier and ski jumper. He went to prison for playing Roehampton, but was released in time to become the British Ski Champion in January 1914.

In November 1913, Emmeline Pankhurst explained that the men had "made a rule that although ladies could play golf all week (on days when men were usually at work), the golf links were reserved entirely for men on Saturdays and Sundays."

This was more than everyday sexism. Pankhurst identified a dramatic cultural shift in which sport was being redefined as a predominantly male occupation. The modern Olympic Games, which were first held in 1896 and initially did not allow female participants, are considered a turning point in this change. One of the founders of the Olympics, the academic and historian Pierre de Coubertin, had decided that masculinity was in danger. He thought that the "official and periodical exaltation of men's sports" was the best way to rebuild weak men - and that it would require ridding the sport of female influence. This reinforced the belief held in all-male schools and universities that organized sports were the key to preparing men for public service.

Clubs and sporting events around the world followed the Olympics. Cycling clubs changed their policies to exclude women. New bands like the Manchester Wheelers were all-male. Wimbledon had no official women's doubles championship until 1913. And in 1907, the Swiss Alpine Club—which had welcomed female members since 1863—expelled women.

Golf was once an elite sport for women, but clubs began to impose the kind of restrictions Pankhurst mentioned in his speech, or ban women altogether. Women's sport was shorthand for women's political emancipation, and there was strong backlash against both. In an 1897 protest against women taking degrees at Cambridge University, male students directed their anger at a statue of a woman on a bicycle.

In 1910, sports became mainly associated with men. The suffragettes justified their "demolition of golf links and cricket stands" on the grounds that it was the best way to attract men's attention while "injuring no human being". Flora Drummond observed that "[male golfers] don't think about women being tortured in prison by the government... [but] golfers are interested in having their links damaged and they ask who did it. Then they realize women are asking for the vote." Emmeline Pankhurst urged angry male golfers to "tell the government to give women the vote to protect golf from further harm".

Women's sports were shorthand for women's political emancipation, and there was opposition to both

In short, sport was not tangential to suffrage politics: it was the training ground where many women first realized their abilities and merits. Rights. Following a masculine logic, which emphasized how athletic excellence helped prepare men for professional roles, it was also an arena in which women repeatedly equipped themselves well for public life. The Voter's Golf Course campaign saw women reclaim the sporting spaces that were once at home, reminding people of this not-so-distant history.

Their protests also drew attention to the drastic change taking place in sports culture, from which women were excluded. Among other things, it showed how men's support for women's rights was contradictory and could backfire. As Sophia Dulip Singh argued, sport was a "birthright" for women—a basic freedom denied and removed by a cruel oppressor. Addressing the men directly, Emmeline Pankhurst noted that "for nearly 50 years we have had your sympathy and support and nothing has happened... [Now], by targeting your sports facilities, we disgust you and absolutely annoy you."

In the campaign, women's rights ultimately prevailed—but the backlash against women's sports had long-lasting effects. It was successful not only in suppressing women's ability to play sports, but also in hiding records of women's athletic achievements. It cemented the notion that, as de Coubertin put it, women's sports were "against the laws of nature" and that sports had always—or certainly should—belong to men.

Because of this reaction, the history of the sports activities of the suffragettes has been forgotten. By reviving this history, we can not only gain a better understanding of the suffrage movement, but also a more comprehensive understanding of the identity of sports and its kinship with politics.

Rachel Hoyt is a writer and historian. Her books include In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors (Chatto, 2023)