A Deadly Day at the Races: What Radical Protest Can and Cannot Do

0:15 Pushkin.

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0:48 A warning before we start. This cautionary Tale discusses death by suicide. If you're suffering emotional distress or you're having suicidal thoughts, support is available, for example, from the nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In the US, jockey Herbert Jones canters his horse to the start of the Epsom Derby. The year is nineteen thirteen. On Derby Day, Epsom feels like the center of the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have descended on this undulating stretch of countryside fifteen miles from London. Some watch from the open topped buses that brought them here. Others line the running rails a dozen deep. The grandstands are packed. His Majesty, the King looks on from under a black top hat.

1:46 The King owns the horse that Herbert Jones is riding. He's wearing the distinctive royal silks purple and crimson, with a gold braid. Jones knows what it's like to win a derby for the King. He's won two. He also knows that he's not likely to win a third today. His horse, Anma, is an outsider fifty to one. Still, the odds aren't always accurate. Outsiders winds sometimes you never know.

2:18 The fifteen horses line up behind the starting tape, each half a ton of twitching muscle, not always easy for their seven stone riders to control. The course is a mile and a half. It'll take about two and a half minutes, but roughly thirty five miles an hour. Newsreel cameras are in position to capture the key moments, the start, the finish, and the turn for home, the famous Tattenham corner, where the runners will thunder down hill As they sweep to the left. The starter pulls his lever, the tape flies up.

2:58 They're off.

2:59 Jones urges amm On but it soon becomes clear that this time the odds are accurate. A struggles to keep up as the leaders tear down the hill towards Tattenham Corner. Jones has dropped to third from last. Still never give up, Jones keeps pushing hard. The horse in front of him jinks to one side, and suddenly Jones sees why a woman standing on the racetrack right in front of him?

3:32 What on earth is she doing? As we'll hear that is still hotly debated today. But Jones has no time to wander. His horse slams into the woman and clatters to the ground. Jones goes flying headlong towards the turf, then his world goes dark. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. In twenty twenty two, hundreds of thousands of Formula One fans have gathered at Silverstone to watch the British Grand Prix. Tens of millions globally are watching on TV. Unseen by the cameras, five spectators climb a safety barrier. They can hear from the roar of accelerating engines that the race has just started. They can't yet see the cars there are a few corners distant, but it shouldn't be long before they come into view.

4:59 Racing at well over one hundred miles an hour, the five spectators drop down the other side of the barrier, onto a grass verge and towards the tarmac of the track itself. Is this not very dangerous? Not at all? One will later tell a court.

5:19 I can see that it might have looked dangerous to someone who doesn't know about this stuff.

5:24 You see, he says, they'd carefully studded previous Formula One races at Silverstone.

5:31 The part of the track that we went on had a much lower proportion of crashes than the other parts of the track.

5:37 The drivers will see them in time to avoid them, or so they expect. The officials will immediately call a red flag, which tells the drivers there's a danger on track that needs to be cleared. Stop racing, slow down, and drive carefully back to the pits. The live TV footage will show the protesters wearing their orange T shirts with the slogan just stop oil. They'll have drawn attention to their cause of fighting climb much change, at least that's the plan. Still low, they're putting a lot of faith in other people's reaction. Times Are they sure it's not dangerous? The protester shrugs.

6:26 Those drivers are the best drivers in the world, but even the best drivers crash sometimes.

6:36 Why would you run onto a racetrack in front of fast moving cars? Perhaps because you think it will help a cause you passionately believe in, and perhaps because some other people whose stage disruptive protests are seen as heroes, like the woman on Epsom Racecourse in nineteen thirteen. Here, for example, is the blurb from a book for children about her.

7:05 Emily was angry because women didn't have the right to vote. She and her fellow suffragettes had patiently put their argument to the government, but they were ignored. Now it was time for direct action.

7:24 Emily Wilding Davison was born in eighteen seventy two. Her father was a successful businessman, and Emily got a good education a governess a preparatory school in London, a year in Switzerland studying French. Then she won a place at a new college for girls. But midway through her course, her father died, and it turned out he hadn't been quite as successful a businessman as he had appeared. He left his family next to nothing. That was a shock.

8:01 As Emily explained to a friend.

8:04 Mamma has to pay twenty pounds a term for me. I do not know whether I can stay on after this term. Mamma is very anxious to keep me at college for my exam if it is possible.

8:17 It was not possible. Emily had to drop out and find work. Her tutors gave her glowing references. It is a matter of great regret to me that she is unable to finish her course. She is a most hard working student. She has immense perseverance. Perseverance indeed, Emily got a job as a governess, but studied in the evenings with notes borrowed from her former classmates. She saved up enough to take her exam in English Language and Literature and hasted first class honors. Not that the university would actually award her a degree, what with her being a girl.

9:04 Still impressive, but what could a woman do in the eighteen nineties with evidence that she would have got a first class degree if she were a man, Career options were limited. She could continue to work as a governess. Emily found it frustratingly isolating stuck in some big, old house in the provinces, with only a wealthy famili's little children to talk to. She missed the buzz of city life, as she wrote in poems.

9:40 Oh London, how I feel thy magic spell? Now I have left thee and amid the woods sit lonely.

9:51 There was one particular buzz that Emily craved to be part of the movement for women's suffrage. The idea was in the air. Women in New Zealand got the vote in eighteen ninety three, in Australia nineteen oh two, in Finland nineteen o six. In Britain, suffragists had been making the case for decades through petitions and meetings and speeches, but opposition was fierce. Some of that opposition was predictable.

10:26 If everyone had the vote, female voters would outnumber males. Men of England, said one poster, resent this attempted tyranny, But a surprising number of opponents were women themselves.

10:43 Women of England, said.

10:45 The manifesto of the Women's National Anti Suffrage League.

10:49 We appeal to your common sense. Women are debarred by nature and circumstances from the political knowledge of men.

10:59 Hundreds of women signed.

11:01 An appeal against female suffrage, which warned the whole nation would suffer.

11:09 If women got the vote. Due to their.

11:12 Natural quickness of temper.

11:15 It was men's work to debate weighty matters of finance or war.

11:21 Women had other opportunities for public usefulness, such as the care of the sick and the education of children. That was their true dignity and special mission.

11:38 It sounds ridiculous now, but the patient arguments of the suffragists didn't seem to be working. The heavyweight politician David Lloyd George, for example, said he favored votes for women, but when he got into power, did nothing. Some women decided it was time for direct action. They formed a new organization, the WSPU, the Women's Social and Political Union, slogan deeds not words. They disrupted meetings and chained themselves to railings in Downing Street, where the Prime Minister lived.

12:19 Newspapers coined the term for these radical suffragists, the suffragettes. It was meant as an insult, a dismissive, diminutive. They adopted it with pride. Emily quit her job as a governess, moved to London and got employed as an officer at the WSPU. She disrupted a speech by David Lloyd George.

12:48 I was busy haranguing the crowd when the police came up and arrested me.

12:53 Emily was put in prison a dark cell alone. She sang hymns defiantly and scrawled on the wall her personal credo.

13:06 Rebellion against tyrants is obedient to God.

13:11 She also refused to eat, a tactic the Suffragettes had discovered for getting out of jail early. They figured the government would let them go rather than risk a death from starvation. Emily described her prison experience in a letter.

13:29 I fasted one hundred and twenty four hours and was then released. I lost one and a half stone and much flesh. I felt very weak at first, but I'm pulling up rapidly now, She signed off, your loving and rebellious friend, Emily.

13:51 No sooner had she got her strength back than Emily was rebelling again, throwing rocks at the windows of David Lloyd George's car. This time in prison, she discovered the government had a new approach to hunger strikes. A doctor came into her cell well and said.

14:11 I'm going to feed you by force.

14:15 Cautionary tales will be back after the break at Silverstone, spectators noticed the five Just Stop Oil protesters scaling the safety barrier and running towards the track. Phone footage captures how the crowd react. Wankers, he yells one voice, Dickheads adds another run over. Perhaps it's not surprising that a motorsport crowd is hostile to a message about stopping oil.

14:58 But Just Stop Oil protesters made themselves unpopular with other people too. They blocked roads, tied themselves to goldposts during a soccer match, and through soup over Vincent van Goff's sunflowers. In opinion polls, eighty two percent of Brits say climate change is an important issue, Yet fully sixty eight percent said their opinion of Just Stop Oil was unfavorable, Which makes you wander. Are disruptive protests helping the cause or hindering?

15:38 Academics have some jargon for this question. Are radical flank effects positive or negative? In twenty twenty four, the Journal of Global Environmental Psychology published an article the radical flank Curse or Blessing of a social movement. Decades of literature say the authors provide mixed results. In some cases, disruptive protest seems to have helped to cause in others, it seems to have backfired. The researchers weren't about to leave it at that, so they began to dig deeper.

16:22 I'm going to feed you by force, the.

16:25 Doctor said to Emily Davison. Emily described what followed.

16:31 While they held me flat, The doctor, with a steel gag, prized open my mouth to its widest extent. Then a wardrous poured liquid down my throat. What it was I cannot say, but it was foul to the last degree. As I would not swallow the stuff and jerked it out with my tongue. The doctor pinched my nose and somehow gripped my tongue with the gag. The torture was barbaric.

16:59 It got worse. Rubbered tubes rammed down the throat or even up the nostrils to pour the liquid in. Emily smashed the windows in her cell to protest. They moved her to another cell, which had two beds. The door opened inwards, she observed.

17:18 As soon as it was closed, quick as thought, I put the beds down quietly, lengthwise, one touching the other.

17:26 There was still a gap of a foot to the wall, which she filled with an upturned stool.

17:32 The wedge was not absolutely firm, so I jammed in my two slippers and a hair brush.

17:40 She sat on the spot where the two beds met to weigh them down.

17:46 My blockade was complete.

17:49 The wardens discovered they couldn't open the door. They could break the door down heavy iron frame at all, but they'd rather not, as the prison governor later explained that the breaking of a cell door is a serious and expensive matter, so they tried another tactic.

18:10 A ladder appeared at the window. I looked round and saw the nozzle of a hose pipe. They got the water trained full on me. I had to hold on like grim death. The power of the water seemed terrific, and it was as cold as ice.

18:29 Still, Emily didn't budge. They'd have to break the door down. After all.

18:33 It was clear to me that if the door fell, it would kill me on the spot. Strange to say, I had no fear. The door gave. I watched it fascinated as it lurched. However, hands seized it. A mail warder rushed in and seized me, saying you ought to be horse whipped for this.

18:58 Emily got out of prison to find that the hose pipe incident had been widely reported, even raised in Parliament. She got sympathy. Whatever you thought of women's suffrage, this wasn't on. She sued the prison and won, though the judge awarded only nominal damages, saying that Emily had already got something she wanted a good story to write about in the WSPU's newspaper. Emily set about getting herself sent back to prison with a new tactic, setting fire to mail boxes.

19:36 I walked down Fleet Street. I calmly stopped at a big, open mouthed receptacle for London letters. I took out of my pocket a packet of greastproof paper tied with cotton. Inside was some linen, well soaked in kerosene. To this I calmly applied a match. I let the packet, now well alight, go down the receptacle. I then walked on and turned into the first cafe I came to to get lunch.

20:11 Back in prison, another hunger strike and more force feeding.

20:17 As the tube passed down behind the throat, a feeling of suffocation and sickness followed. I naturally commenced to cough, choke, and wretch. I was glad to be sick, which often happened, and the rejected fluid went into the doctor's hands to his disgust, and my satisfaction.

20:39 Was all this really enough?

20:41 Though?

20:43 Getting sent to prison for throwing rocks, setting fire to mail boxes, even planting bombs, as some militant suffragettes had started to do, and then stoically enduring the barbarity of tubes shoved down the throat, or would it take a more grand and shocking gesture to get politicians to take women seriously? Did the suffragette cause need a martyr? Emily began to wander.

21:17 The idea in my mind was one big tragedy may save many others.

21:24 It wouldn't be easy for Emily to martyr herself in prison. There were nets to stop prisoners from jumping to their deaths.

21:33 I realized that my best means of carrying out my purpose was the iron staircase. I walked up stairs and threw myself from the top.

21:45 She had tried to miss the netting and land on the staircase.

21:50 If I had been successful, I should undoubtedly have been killed, as it was a clear drop of thirty to forty feet. But I caught on the edge of the netting.

22:00 There was still a ten foot drop from the edge of the netting to the iron staircase. It might be enough.

22:09 I realized that there was only one chance left to hurl myself with the greatest force I could summon from the netting onto the staircase. I threw myself forward on my head. When I recovered consciousness, voices were buzzing around me. Someone said, fetch the doctor. They lifted me as gently as possible, but the agony was intense.

22:42 This was all getting too intense for the leaders of the WSPU. Deeds not words they had said, but disrupting politicians' speeches was one thing. Planting bombs and setting fire to mail was quite another. They refused to publish Emily's account of her martyrdom bed in their newspaper, and they ended her employment as a WSPU officer. Was becoming an embarrassment.

23:14 At the railway station in Aberdeen, Scotland, in late nineteen twelve, a Baptist minister that just waved off his wife on a train when he was approached by a woman.

23:27 I thought she was an ordinary passenger, he.

23:30 Later recalled, giving testimony to a court, but.

23:34 Without any explanation. She cried, you traitor, you traitor. There came quite a reel of blues.

23:42 And she attacked him with a dog whip. The police detained the woman, but she wasn't finished yet. The minister recalled, to.

23:50 My astonishment, she landed me a very clever, quick blow on the left jaw with her clenched fist.

23:57 The woman turned out to be Emily Davison. Why had Emily attacked a Scottish Baptist minister with a dog whip? The Aberdeen Daily Journal explained that the reverend Gentleman bears a distinct, if not altogether a striking facial resemblance to mister David Lloyd George. Lloyd George was still in government and still disappointing the Suffragettes by failing to act on their cause. He had been expected in Aberdeen that day.

24:32 His look alike had chosen a bad time to see off. His wife. Emily was jailed again. She had just turned forty. The stints in prison were starting to take their toll along with the unemployment. After she had been sacked by the WSPU.

24:53 This last four days hunger strike in Aberdeen found out my weakness. I have had some rheumatism in my neck and back where I fell on that iron staircase. At present, I have no settled work. I wish I could hear of some.

25:11 Emily applied for jobs and tried to get her writing published. She wrote about sacrifice, comparing militant protesters to Jesus Christ.

25:24 The surrender of life itself is a supreme consummation of sacrifice. To lay down life for friends that is glorious, selfless, inspiring for generations yet unborn. That is the last consummate sacrifice of the militant.

25:49 On the first Tuesday of June nineteen thirteen, Emily went to the opening day of the w SPU's Summer Fate, a social occasion with flower decorations and stalls serving strawberries and cream. I'm going to the Derby tomorrow, she told a friend, and the friend was surprised. Emily wasn't a regular racegoer. Why are you going to the Derby, Ah said Emily. Look in the evening papers and you will see cautionary tales. Will be back in a moment. The crowd at Tattenham Corner are wondering what just happened. Annmah Skids along the turf, then gets shakily to his feet.

26:53 Herbert Jones is out cold. As the other fourteen runners race onto the finish, Spectators rush forward to help. Someone grabs hold of Anma's reins. An ambulance arrives and the crew take Joan's off on a stretcher. Then there's the woman and my hit, also unconscious on the grass. A policeman calls out, does anyone know this woman? No one does, but someone says I have a car, I can take her to hospital. Another says I'm a nurse. I'll go with you. Herbert Jones at length wakes up, confused about why he's on a stretcher and what happened in the race.

27:43 Someone starts to explain a woman. Ah, yes, he says, my horse hit her. I remember falling towards the ground. I must have had a bang. At the hospital, Emily remains unconscious. She's being identified now from a name tag found in her jacket. Also in her jacket a suffragettel lag neatly folded. The King and Queen are informed a most regrettable and scandalous proceeding, the King writes in his diary.

28:22 Poor Jones writes the queen knocked about by that horrid woman, as Emily anticipated. She's all over the newspapers. They call her mad, wild, demented. A notorious militant, says the Daily Mail. The hottest of all suffragette hot bloods deep in the hearts of every onlooker, reports the Daily Telegraph. Was a feeling of fierce resentment with the miserable woman. Letters addressed to Emily start to arrive at Epsom Hospital. You should thank your God, says one anonymous missive, that he has spared you the sin of murder. Another says, simply you idiot.

29:18 In their article The Radical Flank, Curse or Blessing of a Social Movement, researchers describe an experiment. They told their subjects about a fictional protest on an environmental issue and asked if they supported the protesters. Some subjects got a description of protesters using only moderate tactics, such as organizing petitions.

29:42 Some got a description of only radical tactics, such as vandalizing property. More people supported moderate than radical protest. Other subjects got a description of two contrasting protest groups, a main moderate group and a smaller radical one, the radical flank. The contrast made people less likely to support the radial called protesters, but more likely to support the moderates. So the experiment has found two effects, one that reduced support for the cause overall, another that increased it. No wonder the literature is mixed on whether disruptive protests help or hinder.

30:29 It's hard to know when one effect outweighs the other, but the experiment suggests something counterintuitive. When someone makes a disruptive protest, it's because they think it will help a cause they passionately believe in. And it might, but not in the way they might hope. Instead of being seen as heroes, they'll be hated. But they'll also make moderate protest groups look more reasonable, groups that make the same arguments, that use less annoying tactics, as the crowd at Silverston shout that the just stop oil protesters. Elsewhere on the track, the race begins. Even the best drivers crash sometimes, and this time they crash before they even reach the first corner.

31:23 One car clips another and clatters into a third, which flips upside down, skims off the track, and smashes into a tire wall. A massive accident. Debris is everywhere. They'll have to stop the race to clear the track. The race officials call a red flag. By the time the drivers get to the protesters part of the track, they've already stopped racing, slowed right down. They don't need to react quickly to avoid the protesters. They just steer around them.

31:59 The TV coverage isn't showing the cars driving slowly back towards the pits. It's showing repeats of that spectacular first corner crash. Nobody watching at home has any idea that the protest has happened. This never was dangerous. The protesters later insist to a court the drivers would have stopped in time anyway. The judge is not impressed.

32:26 None of you were qualified enough or experienced enough properly to assess the risk to you and others. You were, in my view, kidding yourselves.

32:40 Another letter arrives at Emily Davison's bedside. I cannot believe that you could have done such a dreadful act, it says, I can only hope and pray that God will mercifully restore you to life and health. With all my love from your sorrowful mother, Emily never gets to read the letter. After four days in a coma. She dies after Emily had thrown herself onto the prison's iron staircase. The WSPU refused to publish her account in their newspaper. They ostracized her, embarrassed by how extreme she had become now that she had actually died, Well, perhaps she'd been right that a martyr might be useful. The same newspaper's front page depicted Emily as an angel, under the words in honor and in loving reverent memory of Emily Wilding Davison. She died

33:55 for women. They arranged for Emily's coffin to parade through London and appeal for mourners to wear white and carry lilies or black with a bunch of purple irises. Thousands of women followed the coffin, singing hymns. Onward Christian soldiers, fight the good fight with all your might, this marvelous woman said. The funeral program offered up her life as a petition to the king. A fellow suffragette explained, miss Davison went out with the express purpose of stopping the King's horse to challenge the very head of this country.

34:52 That's the story about Emily that's come down to this day. As in the blurb of the book for children.

34:59 She and her fellow suffragettes had patiently put their argument to the government, but they were ignored. At the Derby racecourse, as the King Horse came pounding towards her, Emily was prepared to make the biggest sacrifice of all.

35:18 But is the story right? We get some things right about Emily Davison. She had incredible courage, repeatedly getting herself imprisoned, knowing she'd face the horror of being force fed. And she was right, of course about the cause of votes for women. But are we right to assume that her courage helped her cause. The mixed literature on radical flank effects suggests that it's hard to be certain. Here's something else we might get wrong about Emily. Did she really intend to sacrifice herself? I mentioned that in Emily's jacket police found a neatly folded Suffragette flag. They also found a return train ticket to London and an entrance passed for that evening. At the Summer Fate, Emily had promised

36:15 to visit her sister to help with her newborn niece. None of this suggests she expected to die at epsom. What was Emily trying to achieve. As her biographer Lucy Fisher writes, that question still sparks markedly divisive debate today. She hadn't explained her plans to anyone. The newsreel footage shows that she ducks under the running rail and onto the course when half the runners have already passed. Two horses narrowly avoid her, then anma knocks her down. Eyewitnesses thought that from her viewpoint on the inside of the bend, she couldn't have seen well enough to target one specific horse.

37:06 Others who studied the newsreel footage disc agree. Just before Anna hits her, she reaches up her hand. Was she trying to grab his reins? If so, her risk assessment was as questionable as that of just stop oil. She should have known how hard it would be to stop half a ton of horse at thirty five miles an hour.

37:31 Perhaps she, just like the Silverstone protesters, was kidding herself. The horse racing author Michael Tanner posits another theory. Maybe Emily intended to run onto the course before the runners got there and unfurl her flag for the newsreel cameras. Maybe, not being a regular race goer, she underestimated how quickly the horses would arrive and flash past. She ducked under the rails. The leaders had gone by already. What next, she had only a moment to It took fifteen years after Emily's death for all British women to get the vote in the children's book version of Emily's sacrifice that needed direct action after patient arguments were ignored. In truth, we can't know if the militant suffragettes sped up the

38:39 advent of women's suffrage or delayed it, although we do know that women in other countries got the vote at roughly the same time through those patient arguments alone. Moderate groups in Britain, too, persisted with their patient arguments. The London Society for Women's Suffrage, for example, explained why they weren't attending Emily's funeral. We deplore her actions. They harm our cause by alienating many people who would consider it right to give the vote to women, but wrong to endanger the lives of others. In favor of votes for women against bringing down race horses are balanced reasonable moderate position.

39:30 Sometimes radicals help by making moderates look good. This episode relied on Lucy Fisher's biography Emily Wilding Davison, The Martyr Suffragette and The Suffragette Derby by Michael Tanner. For a fullness of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Dilly. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio Bend and Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice talents of Genevieve Gaunt, Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah jupp As, Saimonroe, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show

40:38 also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardare Studios in London by Noria Barr and Lucy Rowe. Do you want to support the stories we tell on Cautionary Tales. If so, you can join my new Cautionary Club at patreon dot com Slash Cautionary Club for xi exclusive bonus episodes, newsletters, ad free listening, and other exciting perks. Alternatively, you can join Pushkin Plus on our Apple show page for continued benefits from our show and others across the Pushkin network.