When the builders packed up their tools on Tuesday night, February 18, 1913, everything seemed in order at the unfinished house at Walton-on-the-Hill. The future country home of David Lloyd-George, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, was located near the Walton Heath Golf Links in a purposefully lonely and secluded district. Thus, only the gardener was present to hear the explosion at six oʹclock, Wednesday morning. Running to the new house, he found a seven-pound canister of black powder downstairs close by a bundle of shavings soaked in paraffin oil. A candle had burned down to within half an inch of...

There exists a general belief that violence, especially terrorism, is inappropriate for reformers. In his study of the contentiousness and violence accompanying the Reform Bill of 1832, James Andrews points out the middle way expected of reformers: ʺThe reformer, in seeking a way out of his difficulties, uses the tools of persuasion to hold a middle course. He does not find either the passage of repressive legislation or the burning of a Bishopʹs palace legitimate form of argument.ʺ The reformer benefits from the contrast these moderate tactics present when juxtaposed with more extreme measures. Andrews makes clear that coercion is...

As early as November 7, 1908, when suffragette violence still took the form of simple stone throwing to force arrest, Millicent Fawcett wrote to Lady Frances Balfour: ʺWe are all tarred with the same brush in the eyes of the general public. We must just go on: and take every opportunity of emphasizing that our set do care for law and order and are citizens even before we are women’s suffragists.ʺ¹ The phrase ʺtarred with the same brushʺ handily summarizes the primary fears held by moderate reformers in the wake of movement violence. Following domestic terrorism on the incredible scale...

In classic apologia, a key aspect of the denial process is to shift the blame to another party. clearly, oneʹs own culpability diminishes to the extent that another person or group can be saddled with the responsibility for a negative act.¹ However, the fact that reform movement violence is usually performed by agents with definite ties to the larger movement complicates the process of assigning blame to others. Just as simple denial must yield to a more complicated form of distancing from acts of violence, so, too, must the victimage process, the search for a plausible scapegoat, take on a...

On March 10, 1914, a petite suffragette named Mary Richardson, known in movement circles by the alias ʺPolly Dick,ʺ prepared carefully before leaving her boardinghouse for a visit to Londonʹs National Gallery of Art. Hearing of Emmeline Pankhurstʹs arrest the previous day, Richardson had taken her few remaining shillings and had purchased a small axe. She now secured the axe up the left sleeve of her jacket, holding it in place with a chain of safety pins that could be quickly released. Moving through the back streets of Soho and around to the front of the gallery, Richardson entered and...

It is an undeniable fact that violence generates media interest. For modern visual media, dramatic action provides the hook and grants a presumption of importance to even minor characters in the movement drama. One member of ACT UP was very frank in an assessment of visual theatrics as a way to pull in the media eye: ʺWe get our message out in the media and we do it in such a way that itʹs colorful, itʹs creative, itʹs confrontational, itʹs tense. And it has all the ingredients that they love. That the media loves, that the T.V. camera loves, and...

Despite internal divisions concerning the efficacy of the violent ʺvoiceʺ for their cause, moderate reformers take a more unified external stance when comparing the virtues of their radical wing to the failure of the status quo. Gary Alan Fine, in reference to John Brown, asks the general question: ʺUnder what circumstances will political violence against legitimate institutions and innocent victims be embraced?ʺ Among other criteria, Fine determines that a key justification is the ʺfailure of process: violence is seen as a last resort for a just man with a grievance, legitimizing the violence, while claiming that the system is ultimately...

On December 2, 1859, an open wagon bearing a single walnut coffin enclosed within a poplar box rattled its way toward a field southeast of the town of Charlestown, Virginia. Seated on the head of the coffin, gazing calmly around at the countryside, was John Brown. Only his red carpet slippers and white shirt and socks relieved the black of his frock coat, vest, and slouch hat. He wore no necktie. Reportedly, as he looked around, he remarked to those in the wagon, ʺThis is a beautiful country. I have not cast my eye over it before—that is, while...

On December 5, 1913, the writer W. L. George offered this positive assessment of the advantages found in the strongest form of the militant mindset: ʺThe enemy suggests that the militants are angry, sullen, and desperate…. That is not untrue, but it is also true that the best propagandists are not those who go carolling through the lanes. The best, in my view, are those who are animated by a deep sense of intolerable wrong, the serious, the fierce, those who are ready to flash their teeth. I welcome the growth in the militant party of a spirit of savagery,...