Emmeline Pankhurst founds the Women's Social and Political Union to fight for women's political rights in the UK

Transvaal politician Louis Botha forms Het Volk ('The People'), a party committed to Afrikaner self-government

Troops fire on a demonstration in St Petersburg, in the event which becomes known as Bloody Sunday

Industrial Workers of the World (with its members later known as Wobblies) is founded in Chicago as a radical union initiative

Strikes and riots sweep across Russia in the wake of St Petersburg's Bloody Sunday

More than 360,000 Norwegians vote to end the union with Sweden, with only 184 against

The Ulster Unionist Party is founded in Belfast to oppose Home Rule

Henry Campbell-Bannerman leads the Liberals to a massive election victory in the UK on a promised programme of reform

Britain's Labour Party achieves its first electoral success, winning twenty-nine seats at Westminster

The Liberals win a majority in election for Russia's new duma and press ahead with proposals for land reform

Mahatma Gandhi, confronted by racial discrimination in South Africa, launches a programme of passive resistance (satyagraha)

The All-India Muslim League is set up at a meeting of the Muhammadan Educational Conference in Dhaka

A separatist party in Spain, Solidaridad Catalana, makes electoral gains in Catalonia

The Young Turks of Salonika organize a successful uprising against the autocracy of the Ottoman sultan

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in response to two lynchings in Illinois

Mahatma Gandhi, on a visit to India, publishes a pamphlet entitled Hind Swaraj ("Indian Home Rule")

Edward Carson, previously a prominent Conservative politician at Westminster, becomes leader of the Ulster Unionist party

A revolution begins in Mexico that will last ten years before being resolved

Sun Yatsen and others merge several smaller Chinese political groups into the Guomindang, or Nationalist Party

Emiliano Zapata leads peasant groups in the Mexican revolution, under the slogan 'Land and Liberty'

Edward Carson tells a vast crowd in Northern Ireland that they must be ready to defend their Protestant province by force

An uprising in the city of Wuchang is the first major event in the rapidly developing Chinese revolution

Former president Theodore Roosevelt campaigns against President Taft for the Republican nomination

UK suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst is arrested, released and rearrested twelve times within the year

At a conference in Prague Lenin forms the Bolsheviks into a separate political party with himself as leader