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Spotlight on…Flora Drummond

Posted on 18th December, 2023 in Flora Drummond, Suffrage Spotlight, WSPU

Flora McKinnon Drummond (1878–1949) (née Gibson) was born in Manchester and brought up on the Isle of Arran. After leaving school at the age of fourteen, she qualified as a postmistress, but was unable to take up work as under new rules imposing a minimum height of 5 feet 2 inches she was not tall enough. Instead, she trained as a shorthand typist.

She married Joseph Percival Drummond, an upholsterer from Manchester, in 1898. They lived in Manchester and were members of the Independent Labour Party and the Fabian Society. Flora was also a member of the Clarion Club and the Women’s Co-operative Guild. She worked in a mantle finishing factory and a baby-linen factory, and later said this was so she could study the conditions of working class women’s lives. Subsequently, she worked for a typewriter company. 

Flora joined the WSPU in 1905 and became a salaried organiser in London in 1906. Like Mrs Pankhurst, she left the ILP because of its lack of support for women’s suffrage. She organised WSPU demonstrations, and was nicknamed “the General” because of the military-style costume she wore at suffragette parades, which she often led on horseback. She was well-known for her daring and imaginative escapades which included bursting into number 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting, and mooring a motor launch opposite the terrace of the House of Commons to harangue MPs at their afternoon tea.

Flora Drummond, known as General Drummond

Her first arrest was in 1906, and in all she was imprisoned nine times. With Mrs Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst she was arrested in October 1908 after the WSPU issued a pamphlet urging the public to help them “rush the House of Commons”. She and Mrs Pankhurst were sentenced to three months imprisonment, but Flora was released after nine days when it was discovered she was pregnant. She was WSPU organizer in Glasgow in 1909. By 1911 she was back at Clement’s Inn and in charge of WSPU branches. She was arrested again in June 1913, but released because of ill health. She was arrested in May 1914 and went on hunger strike.

During the First World War she worked with Mrs Pankhurst and Christabel in their recruiting and anti-German campaign. She toured industrial areas in South Wales, the Midlands and the Clydeside, lecturing workers about patriotism and the evils of striking. In 1918 she campaigned for Christabel Pankhurst when she stood as a Parliamentary candidate for Smethwick during the general election. After the war, having rejected her earlier socialist beliefs, Flora and Elsie Bowerman founded the right-wing Women’s Guild of Empire, which opposed strikes, socialism and Bolshevism. In April 1926 the Guild organised a demonstration against strikes and industrial unrest, culminating in an anti-socialist meeting in the Albert Hall. She was still active in the Guild in 1945.

Flora Drummond arrested in 1913

She divorced Joseph Drummond in 1922 and married Alan Simpson, a marine engineer, though she retained the name Drummond. In the 1930s she was chair of the Six Point Group and an executive committee member of the Equal Rights International. Alan Simpson was killed in an air raid in 1944. Flora died in 1949 at Carradale, Argyll.

Picture Credits:-

Flora Drummond, The General; and Flora Drummond arrested in 1913: The Women’s Library on Flickr, No Known Copyright Restrictions