Suffragettes Preparing for Women's Sunday, 21 June 1908

Suffragettes lining up for Woman's Sunday, 21 June 1908. The photograph depicts one of the seven processions that marched through London to the rally in Hyde Park. In the foreground of the photograph can be seen the Suffragette leader Emmeline Pethick Lawrence standing beside the Anglo-Jewish writer, political activist and Suffragette sympathiser Israel Zangwill. In the background Suffragettes wearing their purple, white and green regalia hold aloft one of the 700 banners carried in the procession. Woman's Sunday was the first time the regalia was seen in public and soon became an essential part of the 'suffragette' uniform'. The Votes for Women's newspaper urged suffragettes to wear the sash to all public events and gave instruction that 'the regalia will be worn over the right shoulder and will be fastened under the left arm'. The purple, white and green colour scheme of the suffragettes was devised by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence in 1908. She described the symbolism of the colours as follows: 'Purple as everyone knows is the royal colour. It stands for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette, the instinct of freedom and dignity...white stands for purity in private and public life...green is the colour of hope and the emblem of spring.'

Woman's Sunday was the first 'monster meeting' to be organised by the Women's Social and Political Union. The highly choreographed demonstration attracted a crowd of up to 300,000 drawn by the colourful spectacle of the delegates dressed in the suffragette tricolour and carrying over seven hundred embroidered banners. ‘Never’, reported the Daily Chronicle, has so vast a throng gathered in London to witness a parade of political forces’.