An inspiration
Whilst George Bernard Shaw’s plays inspired many people, of particular significance is the influence his works had on The Pankhursts, a name famously associated with the suffragette movement. In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the leading militant organisation campaigning for women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom.
Both Shaw and the WSPU shared the view that the suffrage movement would have to become radical and militant if it was going to be effective. In 1906, Bernard Shaw told an American journalist that suffragettes should “shoot, kill, maim, destroy – until they are given the vote.”
Our greatest entertainer and teacher
On his death in 1950, the Prime Minister summed Shaw up “As critic, dramatist, man of letters, humourist, social revolutionary and prophet, he was our greatest entertainer and teacher.”
Shaw’s Corner is now the final resting place of this inspirational man, and his wife, Charlotte. The ashes of both are scattered in the garden at Shaw’s Corner, outside the playwright’s wooden writing hut.