Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell and Labour cabinet minister Ellen Wilkinson were considered, but ultimately Pankhurst won out. Her statue is only the second to feature a woman in the entirety of Manchester city. (The other female statue features Queen Victoria.)

“I’m proud of Manchester’s role in the history of women’s suffrage,” Minister for Equalities Baroness Susan Williams said in a statement. “While it’s taken 100 years, I can’t think of a better choice than to honour Emmeline Pankhurst in this way.”

Pankhurst was born into a middle-class family in Manchester in 1858. Her parents Sophia and Robert were politically active, and Sophia in particular has been widely credited with introducing her daughter to the women’s suffrage movement. Aged 14, Pankhurst accompanied her mother to a talk by the suffragist Lydia Becker. Pankhurst would later write: “I left the meeting a conscious and confirmed suffragist.”

By the early 20th century, Pankhurst had grown frustrated with the suffragist groups that had coalesced under the banner of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in 1867. Their tactics, she believed, were too moderate, too slow-moving and too concerned with ‘respectability’.

A statue of Emmeline Pankhurst was just unveiled in Manchester