1905 marked a new phase in the struggle for the vote, for it was the year that Annie Kenney, a mill hand from Oldham, and Christabel Pankhurst brought the cry "votes for women" to the attention of the press, and the nation. The Women's Social and Political Union, the suffrage society to which they belonged, seized on the publicity that surrounded the arrest of these two women as they tried to make themselves and their cause heard at a Liberal Party meeting. By 1906, after the Prime Minister had advised the women to "go on pestering" and to have "patience", Kenney gave the frustrated reply of "Sir, we are not satisfied!" The WSPU then began a campaign of militancy and lawbreaking in order to get its own way. Annie Kenney worked in the local mill from the age of 10, and later started a trade union there. Described in The Times as "a small woman with large, gleaming, dark eyes, she had a vivid personality which inspired and attracted other women." She campaigned alongside the Pankhursts for women's suffrage, and went to prison many times. "Prison. It was not prison for me. Hunger strikes. They had no fears for me. Cat and Mouse Act. I could have laughed. A prison cell was quiet - no telephone, no paper, no speeches, no sea sickness, no sleepless nights. I could lie on my plank bed all day and all night and return once more to my day dreams." Her account of the struggle for the vote, Memoirs of a Militant, is dedicated to "The Unknown Warriors of the Women's Bloodless Revolution."
