Owing to the representations made to us by the Police at the last moment, and at their express wish, the Procession will march five abreast instead of the seven, as was originally announced.

The greatest procession of women ever seen since the world began marches on Saturday through the streets of the world's greatest city, and the large majority of those in its ranks are not even "persons" in the eyes of the law! Does the average looker-on at this great spectacle realise the public rights and duties to which women from all over the world lay claim today were exercised by women of the Mother Country, they have already been accorded to the women of some of the Daughter Colonies.

Something of this will be shown in the Pageant of Empire. The Colonial Section is led by New Zealand, the first country under the Crown to give women full political rights. This is headed by Lady Stout, a wife of the Chief Justice of the Colony, accompanied by Mrs. Macmillan, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Governor of St. John's College Dr Burn carries the standard.

Australia, to whose women full and equal franchise was extended in 1902, the Coronation year of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, follows, led by Mrs Fisher, wife of the Prime Minister of Australia. In the ranks will be Lady Cockburn, wife of Sir John Cockburn, Agent-General for South Australia; Mrs Bowman, wife of the Leader of the Opposition, Queensland Parliament: Miss Vida Goldstein, Leader of the Women's Party in Victoria…

No section of womanhood in the United Kingdom is unrepresented in the great procession. Women engaged in organised industries and trades, women whose sphere of labour is the home, women who hold an honoured place in professions, women who lives have been spent in the service of humanity – all will be in the ranks. All the learned profession, science, literature, the drama, music, art, and the skilled handicrafts are accorded a place of honour.

Literature will be represented in the procession by such writers as Elizabeth Robins, Beatrice Harraden, Flora Annie Steel, Sarah Grand, Cicely Hamilton, Alice Meynell, Evelyn Sharp and Israel Zangwill: the drama by Lena Ashwell, Lillah McCarthy, Eva Moore, Decima Moore, Yvette Guilbert…

Amongst the musicians Dr. Ethel Smyth will be walking in her robes… One of the most notable figures will be that of Mrs Annie Besant, who will be one of the speakers at the mass meeting at the Albert Hall at 8.30 in the evening. Muriel Countess de la Warr and the Ladies Idina and Alice Sackville will be among the marchers…

The entire Procession will be reviewed by Mrs Wolstenholme Elmy, the oldest militant suffragist who has spent 46 years of her life in fighting for the vote.

Apart from the Coronation itself nothing of greater historical significance has taken place in 1911 then the Women's Pageant and Procession on Saturday last. Women of every rank, every calling, of every shade of political and religious opinion, from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India united to form a procession five miles in length, walking five miles in length, walking five abreast to the music of 100 bands. Starting at 5.30 with a colour bearer heralding Joan of Arc, the pageant passed through the tens of thousands of people grouped to watch the passing.

Every profession and trade that women have forced themselves into set its contingent to swell the ranks. Actresses, artists, gardeners, gymnastic teachers, writers, clerks, business women and doctors in their hundreds came quickly after the beautiful symbolic Empire Car, which was a mass of roses.

Even the most unimaginative person who witnessed the moving panorama which was unfolded to the delight and wonderment of the myriads of spectators who came out to see it must, we should suppose, have been impressed with the meaning of it…

All sections of the Suffragist movement eagerly and cheerfully co-operated and it is claimed that no section of womanhood in the United Kingdom was unrepresented in its ranks…. The Men's Societies for Women's Enfranchisement being stationed in the rear…

The streets through which it passed were thronged with onlookers to an extent which has rarely been surpassed, except on the occasion of some great national or royal ceremonial of the first importance… Altogether it was a remarkable picture of colour and of movement, and one the like of which has probably never before been seen in any city in the world.

The reception according to the army of women joyously confident in the righteousness of their cause, proud of the glorious opportunity of demonstrating their firm-fixed resolve to gain the rights of citizenship and sure of victory in the very near future, was undoubtedly sympathetic. By comparisons with previous processions the absence of any expression of hostility on the part of any considerable section of the public was most marked. Instead, there was unmistakable evidence all along the route that the movement had won the respect and, to a degree never before evinced, the approvable of the people.

Mrs Pankhurst in opening said the keynote of their movement was co-operation with men with the object of building up a better and brighter type of humanity.

General Drummond rode first – composed, smiling, universally welcomed as she always is. And then came Miss Charlotte Marsh with the colours, holding her place by the right of martyrdom; and then Miss Annan Bryce, a beautiful, militant Joan of Arc; and then the splendid little group of New Crusaders. They all formed a glorious heraldry…

Mrs Despard at its head (of the Women's Freedom League delegation), certainly one of the most conspicuous personalities in the demonstration, was recognised and acclaimed by all classes, but especially by the poor, and no man in the Procession seemed so widely known as Mr. Lansbury…

One episode stands out conspicuous in everyone's memory during the long hours of that march. It was when, in passing the Green Park, when at last I saw the banners of the Men's Political Union bringing up the rear. The Men's League was remarkably strong, numbering some hundreds, and including Mr Zangwill and Mr. A. J. Webbe as first-rate representatives of literature and sport. As I had been instructed I fell in at the head of the Men's Political Union to carry their colours for the rest of the march. Five years ago I had never supposed that I should one day advance down Piccadilly on horseback carrying a huge flag of purple, white and green resting on one shoulder or raised high above my head.

(5) The Vote (24th June, 1911)

Forty thousand women's marching through London forty thousand women walking five abreast, with pennants flying abreast, with pennants flying, banners held aloft, colours of every hue and shade and gradation blazing in the sun; forty thousand women with faces to the dawn, women of every rank and party and creed and race and colour, women old and young, rich and poor; comrades all in the cause of freedom… 

At half-past five the procession started from the Embankment and came swinging along at a good pace up Northumberland Avenue. The roads were packed with such dense crowds that in some parts the police had considerable difficulty in clearing a way for it… 

The Police Court Protests banner, Marshalled by Miss Turner, and followed by fourteen members of the League, bore the words; "Legislation Without Representation is Slavery." Next to this was carried the Tax Resistance banner, showing that the Women's Freedom League initiated tax resistance in 1907.

The Grille Protest banner, depicting the grille and the chains, come next, followed by a large number of representatives of the famous protests marshalled by Mrs. De Vismes. The Picketers' banner bore the words: "729 hours were spent in Picketing the House of Commons to Exercise the Subjects Right of Petitioning the King's Ministers." The picketers made a brave show with their flying pennants of green, of gold, and of white. The Bermondsey Ballot-Box banner, which celebrated the ballot-box protest made by Mrs Chapin and Miss Alison Neilans, chronicled the fact that the protest was initiated in 1909 by the League.

In November 1910, in protest at the failure of the first Conciliation Bill, Emmeline Pankhurst convened a huge meeting and enjoined the audience to "come with me to the House of Commons". Hundreds of women followed her. It looked as though the truce was at an end, but the brutality of the police that evening was disgusting enough to swing the pendulum of public opinion towards the protesters. Brailsford himself took charge of the collection of evidence from the demonstrators. His report contained enough irrefutable testimony not just of brutality by the police but also of indecent assault - now becoming a common practice among police officers - to shock many newspaper editors, and the report was published widely. Its impact went way beyond the bounds of the Woman's Press, which had commissioned it. The report, and the new Liberal Government that took office after the election of December 1910, also bought more time for the WSPU truce on militancy. The truce held while a new Conciliation Bill was published without the £10 property qualification for voting that had been in the first Bill, and without an express ban on husbands and wives voting together. In a sudden surge of public and parliamentary enthusiasm, the second reading of this Bill passed the Commons on 5 May 1911 with a majority of 167, and for a brief moment it seemed to Brailsford, Nevinson and company that their prodigious negotiations had been worthwhile:

They were reckoning without top Liberal politicians, in particular the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George. Lloyd George loved high office. He was not remotely interested in votes for women, and he regarded the campaigners, especially the militant ones, as an infernal nuisance. On the other hand, he understood that the Conciliation Committee posed a problem for the Government. A Commons majority of 167 could hardly be ignored, especially when the Bill had been passed two years running. But Lloyd George was convinced that the chief effect of the Bill, if it became law, would be to hand more votes to the Tory Party. The problem called for what Lloyd George would have described as diplomacy, but quickly turned out to be duplicity. After stalling the WSPU all through the summer, Lloyd George started secret discussions with Brailsford and the Conciliation Committee. On 7 November 1911, he told the Committee he would support the Conciliation Bill if another Bill to introduce manhood suffrage failed. No such Bill had even been suggested, but, as if by magic, the following day Prime Minister Asquith announced that in the next session of Parliament he would introduce a Bill to enfranchise most men - a Bill that, he promised, could be amended to include women.

For the 17 June 1911 Coronation Procession, Edith Downing and Marion Wallace-Dunlop again worked together, creating the Prisoner' Pageant, the Historical Pageant and the Pageant of Empire. This represented an immense amount of work. The creation of a wide range of costumes to dress those taking part in the Historical Pageant was particularly taxing. Groups, suitably attired, representing women of renown from the 'early Middle Ages, the Reformation period and in recent history', each carrying an appropriate banner, were designed to impress onlookers with the scope of women's public work through the centuries.