Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors and misprints have been corrected.
Blank pages present in the printed original have been deleted in the
e-text version.
Text in Italics is indicated between _underscores_ whereas text in
small capitals has been replaced by regular uppercase text.
Chapter XVI appears to be missing in the printed original.
In Chapter I, the sentence starting with "Many other women's
societies..." has been retained as printed in the original.
* * * * *
THE SUFFRAGETTE
[Illustration: Sylvia Pankhurst designing a part of the decorations of
the Prince's Skating Rink]
THE SUFFRAGETTE
THE HISTORY OF THE WOMEN'S MILITANT SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT 1905-1910
BY
E. SYLVIA PANKHURST
"You have made of your Prisons a temple of honour."
W. E. GLADSTONE
New York
STURGIS & WALTON
COMPANY
1911
_All rights reserved_
Copyright 1911
BY STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1911
PREFACE BY MRS. PANKHURST
This history of the Women's Suffrage agitation is written at a time
when the question is in the very forefront of British politics. What
the immediate future holds for those women who are most actively
engaged in fighting for their political freedom no one can foretell,
but one thing is certain: complete victory for their cause is not far
distant.
When the long struggle for the enfranchisement of women is over, those
who read the history of the movement will wonder at the blindness that
led the Government of the day to obstinately resist so simple and
obvious a measure of justice.
The men and women of the coming time will, I am persuaded, be filled
with admiration for the patient work of the early pioneers and the
heroic determination and persistence in spite of coercion, repression,
misrepresentation, and insult of those who fought the later militant
fight.
Perhaps the women born in the happier days that are to come, while
rejoicing in the inheritance that we of to-day are preparing for them,
may sometimes wish that they could have lived in the heroic days of
stress and struggle and have shared with us the joy of battle, the
exaltation that comes of sacrifice of self for great objects and
the prophetic vision that assures us of the certain triumph of this
twentieth-century fight for human emancipation.
E. PANKHURST.
4, Clement's Inn, W. C., _London_.
JANUARY, 1911.
PREFACE
In writing this history of the Militant Women's Suffrage Movement I
have endeavoured to give a just and accurate account of its progress
and happenings, dealing fully with as many of its incidents as space
will permit. I have tried to let my readers look behind the scenes in
order that they may understand both the steps by which the movement has
grown and the motives and ideas that have animated its promoters.
I believe that women striving for enfranchisement in other lands and
reformers of future days may learn with renewed hope and confidence
how the "family party," who in 1905 set out determined to make votes
for women the dominant issue of the politics of their time, in but
six years drew to their standard the great woman's army of to-day. It
is certain that the militant struggle in which this woman's army has
engaged and which has come as the climax to the long, patient effort of
the earlier pioneers, will rank amongst the great reform movements of
the world. Set as it has been in modern humdrum days it can yet compare
with any movement for variety and vivacity of incident. The adventurous
and resourceful daring of the young Suffragettes who, by climbing up on
roofs, by sliding down through skylights, by hiding under platforms,
constantly succeeded in asking their endless questions, has never been
excelled. What could be more piquant than the fact that two of the
Cabinet Ministers who were carrying out a policy of coercion towards
the women should have been forced into the witness box to be questioned
and cross-questioned by Miss Christabel Pankhurst, the prisoner in the
dock? What, too, could throw a keener searchlight upon the methods of
our statesmen than the evidence put forward in the course of that trial?
To many of our contemporaries perhaps the most remarkable feature of
the militant movement has been the flinging-aside by thousands of women
of the conventional standards that hedge us so closely round in these
days for a right that large numbers of men who possess it scarcely
value. Of course it was more difficult for the earlier militants to
break through the conventionalities than for those who followed, but,
as one of those associated with the movement from its inception, I
believe that the effort was greater for those who first came forward to
stand by the originators than for the little group by whom the first
blows were struck. I believe this because I know that the original
militants were already in close association with the truth that not
only were the deeds of the old time pioneers and martyrs glorious, but
that their work still lacks completion, and that it behoves those of
us who have grasped an idea for human betterment to endure, if need
be, social ostracism, violence, and hardship of all kinds, in order
to establish it. Moreover, whilst the originators of the militant
tactics let fly their bolt, as it were, from the clear sky, their early
associates rallied to their aid in the teeth of all the fierce and
bitter opposition that had been raised.
The hearts of students of the movement in after years will be stirred
by the faith and endurance shown by the women who faced violence at the
hands of the police and others in Parliament Square and at the Cabinet
Minister meetings, and above all by the heroism of the noble women who
went through the hunger strike and the mental and physical torture of
forcible feeding.
A passionate love of freedom, a strong desire to do social service and
an intense sympathy for the unfortunate, together, made the movement
possible in its present form. Those who have worked as a part of it
know that it is notable not merely for its enthusiasm and courage, but
also for its cheery spirit of loyalty and comradeship, its patient
thoroughness in organisation which has made possible its many great
demonstrations and processions, its freedom from bitterness and
recrimination, and its firm faith in the right.
E. SYLVIA PANKHURST.
London, May, 1911.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Sylvia Pankhurst designing a part of the decorations of the
Prince's Skating Rink _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE.
Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney 35
First Women's Suffrage Demonstration ever held in Trafalgar
Square, May 19th, 1906. Mr. Keir Hardie speaking: Mrs.
Pankhurst and Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy in centre of the
platform 80
Selling and advertising "Votes for Women" in Kingsway 174
Mrs. Pankhurst carrying a petition from the Third Women's
Parliament to the Prime Minister on February 13th, 1908 202
The Head of the Procession to Hyde Park, June 21st, 1908 245
A Section of the great "Votes for Women" meeting in Hyde
Park on June 21st, 1908 247
Lord Rosebery and other Members of both Houses watching
the Suffragettes' struggle in Parliament Square, June 30th,
1908 248
Christabel Pankhurst inviting the public to "rush" the House
of Commons, at a meeting in Trafalgar Square, Sunday,
October 11th, 1908 255
Mrs. Pankhurst and Christabel hiding from the police in the
roof garden at Clement's Inn, October 12th, 1908 257
Reading the Warrant, October 13th, 1908 266
Mr. Curtis Bennett listening to Miss Pankhurst's speech from
the Dock, October, 1908 268
Miss Christabel Pankhurst questioning Mr. Herbert Gladstone 285
Mr. Herbert Gladstone in the witness-box being examined by
Miss Christabel Pankhurst, October, 1908 300
Members of the Women's Freedom League attempting to enter
the House after the taking down of the grille, October 28th,
1908 319
Mrs. Pankhurst in Prison 330
Ejection of a woman questioner from Birrell's meeting in the
City Temple, November 12th, 1908 333
The Chelmsford By-Election 348
The human letters dispatched by Miss Jessie Kenney to Mr.
Asquith at No. 10 Downing Street, Jan. 23, 1909 351
Procession to welcome Mrs. Pankhurst, Christabel, and Mrs.
Leigh on their release from prison, December 19th, 1908 353
Mrs. Lawrence's Release Procession, April 17th, 1909 360
The arrest of Miss Dora Marsden, the Standard Bearer,
March 30th, 1909 362
Elsie Howey who as Joan of Arc, rode at the head of the
procession formed to celebrate Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's
release from prison 365
A part of the decoration of the Exhibition held in the
Prince's Skating Rink, May, 1909 369
The band out for the first time, May, 1909 376
Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's release, April 17th 380
Christabel waving to the hungry strikers from a house
overlooking the prison, July, 1909 383
The hunger strikers waving to Christabel from their prison
cells, July, 1909 394
Forcible Feeding with the Nasal Tube 433
Lady Constance Lytton before she threw the stone at New
Castle, October 9th, 1909 440
Arrest of Miss Dora Marsden outside the Victoria University
of Manchester, October 4th, 1909 444
Jessie Kenney as she tried to gain admittance to Mr. Asquith's
meeting on Dec. 10, 1909, disguised as a telegraph boy 476
THE SUFFRAGETTE
THE SUFFRAGETTE
CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS
FROM THE FORMATION OF THE WOMEN'S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION TO THE
SUMMER OF 1905.
From her girlhood my mother, the founder of the Women's Social and
Political Union, had been inspired by stories of the early reform
movements, and even before this, at an age when most children have
scarcely learnt their alphabet, her father, Robert Goulden, of
Manchester, set her to read his newspaper to him at breakfast and thus
awakened her lasting interest in politics.
The Franco-German War was still a much-discussed event when Robert
Goulden took his thirteen-year-old daughter to school in Paris, placing
her at the Ecole Normale, where she became the room-companion of Henri
Rochfort's daughter, Noémie. Noémie Rochfort told her little English
schoolfellow much of her own father's adventurous career, and Emmeline
Goulden soon became an ardent and enthusiastic republican. She was now
delighted to discover that she had been born on the anniversary of
the destruction of the Bastille and was proud to tell her friend that
her own grandmother had been an earnest politician, and one of the
earliest members of the Anti-Corn Law League, and that her grandfather
had narrowly escaped death upon the field of Peterloo. Even before her
school days in Paris she had been taken by her mother to a Women's
Suffrage meeting addressed by Miss Lydia Becker.
On returning home to England, Emmeline Goulden settled down at
seventeen years of age to help her mother in the care of her eight
younger brothers and sisters, and when she was twenty-one she married
Dr. Richard Marsden Pankhurst, who was many years older than herself,
and had long been well known as a public man.
Dr. Pankhurst had been one of the founders of the pioneer Manchester
Women's Suffrage Committee and one of its most active workers in the
early days. He had drafted the original Women's Enfranchisement Bill,
then called the Women's Disabilities Removal Bill, to give votes to
women on the same terms as men, which had first been introduced by Mr.
Jacob Bright in 1870 and had then passed its Second Reading in the
House of Commons by a majority of thirty-three. With Lord Coleridge,
Dr. Pankhurst had acted as counsel for the women who had claimed to be
put upon the Parliamentary Register in the case of Chorlton v. Lings
in 1868. He was also at the time one of the most prominent members of
the Married Women's Property Committee and had drafted the Bill to give
married women the absolute right to their own property and to sue and
be sued in the Courts of Law, which was so soon to be placed as an Act
upon the Statute Book. Two years before this great Act became law, Mrs.
Pankhurst was elected to the Married Women's Property Committee, and
at the same time she became a member of the Manchester Women's Suffrage
Committee.
In 1889 my parents helped to form the Women's Franchise League. My
sister Christabel and I, then nine and seven years old, already took
a lively interest in all the proceedings, and tried as hard as we
could to make ourselves useful, writing out notices in big, uncertain
letters and distributing leaflets to the guests at a three days'
Conference held in our own home. About this time we two children had
begun to attend Women's Suffrage and other public meetings, and these
we reported in a little manuscript magazine, which we both wrote and
illustrated. When some few years afterwards, owing chiefly to lack of
funds and the ill health of its most prominent workers, the Women's
Franchise League was discontinued, Dr. and Mrs. Pankhurst returned to
Manchester and worked mainly for general questions of social reform.
Years before, my mother had joined the Women's Liberal Federation in
the hope that it would work to remove both the political and economic
grievances of women and to raise the status of women generally, but
finding that the Federation was being used merely to forward the
interests of the Liberal Party, of which women could not be members
and in the formation of whose programme they were allowed no voice,
she had resigned her membership. In 1894 she and Dr. Pankhurst joined
the Independent Labour Party, one of the decisive reasons for this
step being that, unlike the Liberal and Conservative parties, the
Independent Labour Party admitted men and women to membership on equal
terms. In the same year Mrs. Pankhurst was elected to the Chorlton
Board of Guardians, and remained a member of that body for four years.
This experience taught her much of the pressing needs of the poor, and
of the bitter hardships, especially, of the women's lives.
After Dr. Pankhurst's death, in 1898, Mrs. Pankhurst retired from the
Board of Guardians and became a Registrar of Births and Deaths.
For the next few years, my mother took no active part in politics,
except as a member of the Manchester School Board,[1] but in 1901 my
sister Christabel became greatly interested in the Suffrage propaganda
organised by Miss Esther Roper, Miss Eva Gore-Booth, and Mrs. Sarah
Dickinson amongst the women textile workers. She was also elected
to the Manchester Women's Suffrage Committee, of which Miss Roper
was Secretary. Christabel soon struck out a new line for herself.
Impressed by the growing strength of the Labour Movement she began to
see the necessity of converting to the question of Women's Suffrage the
various Trade Union organisations, which were upon the eve of becoming
a concrete force in politics. She therefore made it her business to
address as many of the Trade Unions as were willing to receive her.
We were all much interested in Christabel's work and my mother's
enthusiasm was quickly re-awakened. The experiences of her later
years had brought her a keener insight into the results of the
political disabilities of women, against which she had rebelled as
a high-spirited girl, and she now realised more strongly than ever
before, the urgent and immediate need for the enfranchisement of her
sex. She became filled with the consciousness that her duty lay in
forcing this one question into the forefront of practical politics,
even if in so doing she should find it necessary to give up all her
other work. The Women's Suffrage cause, and the various ways in which
to further its interests were now constantly present in all our
minds. A glance at the early history of the movement, to say nothing
of personal experience, was enough to show that the Liberal and
Conservative parties had no intention of taking the question up, and,
after mature consideration, my mother at last decided that a separate
women's organisation must be formed. Therefore, on October 10th, 1903,
she invited a number of women to meet at our home, 62 Nelson Street,
Manchester, and the Women's Social and Political Union was formed.
Almost all the women who were present on that original occasion were
working-women, Members of the Labour Movement, but it was decided from
the first that the Union should be entirely independent of Class and
Party.
The phrase "Votes for Women" was now for the first time in the history
of the movement adopted as a watchword by the new Union. The propaganda
work was at first mainly carried on amongst the women workers of
Lancashire and Yorkshire and, in the Spring of 1904, as a result of the
Women's Social and Political Union's activities, the Annual Conference
of the Independent Labour Party instructed its Administrative Council
to prepare a Bill for the Enfranchisement of Women to be laid before
Parliament in the forthcoming session. This Resolution, though carried
by an overwhelming majority, had been bitterly opposed by a minority of
the Conference, who asserted that the Labour Party should not concern
itself with a partial measure of enfranchisement, but should work
directly to secure universal adult suffrage for both men and women.
Therefore, before preparing any special measure, the National
Administrative Council of the Independent Labour Party went very
carefully into the whole question. They were advised by Mr. Keir Hardie
and others who understood Parliamentary procedure that a measure
for universal adult suffrage, which would not only bring about most
sweeping changes, but would open countless avenues for discussion
and consequent obstruction, could never hope to be carried through
Parliament except by the responsible Government of the day. It was,
therefore, useless for the Labour representatives to attempt to
introduce such a measure. In addition to this, it was pointed out that,
whilst a large majority of the Members of the House of Commons had
already pledged themselves to support an equal Bill to give votes to
women on the same terms as men, no substantial measure of Parliamentary
support had as yet been obtained for adult suffrage, even if confined
to men. Taking into consideration also the present state of both public
and Parliamentary feeling and with a million more women than men in the
British Isles, there was absolutely no chance of carrying into law any
proposal to give a vote to every grown man and woman in the country.
Having thus arrived at the conclusion that an adult suffrage measure
was out of the question, the Council now carefully inquired into the
various classes of women who were possessed of the qualifications
which would have entitled them to vote had they been men. On its being
ascertained that the majority would be householders, whose names were
already upon the register of Municipal voters, the following circular
was addressed to all the Independent Labour Party branches.
We address to your branch a very urgent request to ascertain from your
local voting register the following particulars:--
(1) The total number of electors in the Ward.
(2) The total number of women voters.
(3) The number of women voters of the working classes.
(4) The number of voters not of the working classes.
It is impossible to lay down a strict definition of the term "working
classes," but for this purpose it will be sufficient to regard as
working-class women, those who work for wages, who are domestically
employed, or who are supported by the earnings of wage-earning
children.
It was not unnatural, that the majority of the branches failed to
comply with a request which obviously entailed a very extensive
work. Nevertheless returns were sent in from between forty and fifty
different towns and districts in various parts of the country and these
showed the following results:[2]
Total of electors on the Municipal register 423,321
Total of Women Voters 59,920
Total of Working Women Voters as defined above 49,410
Total of Non-working Women Voters 10,510
Percentage of Working Women Voters 82.45
On receiving these figures, the National Council of the Independent
Labour Party decided to adopt the original Women's Enfranchisement
Bill, which passed its Second Reading in 1870. The text of the Bill was
as follows:
In all Acts relating to the qualifications and registration of voters
or persons entitled or claiming to be registered and to vote in the
election of members of Parliament, wherever words occur which import
the masculine gender the same shall be held to include women for
all purposes connected with and having reference to the right to be
registered as voters and to vote in such election, any law or usage to
the contrary notwithstanding.
Meanwhile we of the Women's Social and Political Union were eagerly
looking forward to the new session of Parliament. It is indeed
wonderful, in the midst of the great Women's Movement that is present
with us to-day, to look back upon its small beginnings in that dreary
and dismal time not yet six years ago. It seemed then well-nigh
impossible to rouse the London women from their apathy upon this
question, for the old Suffrage workers had lost heart and energy in
the long struggle and those who had joined them in recent days saw no
prospect that votes for women would ever come to pass.
I myself was then a student at the Royal College of Art, South
Kensington, but I decided to absent myself in order to help my mother,
who had come down from Manchester to "lobby," as it is called, on
those few important days. The House met on Tuesday, February 13th, and
during the eight days which intervened before the result of the Private
Members' ballot was made known we spent the whole of our time in the
Strangers' Lobby striving to induce every Member who had pledged
himself to support Women's Suffrage to agree that his chance in the
ballot should be given to a Women's Suffrage Bill. It was my first
experience of Lobbying. I knew we had an uphill task before us, but I
had no conception of how hard and discouraging it was to be. Members
of Parliament all told us that they had pledged themselves to do
"something for their constituents" or had some other measure in which
they were interested, or had not been in Parliament long and preferred
to wait until they had more experience before they would care to ballot
for a Bill at all. Oh, yes, they were "in favour" of Women's Suffrage;
they believed that "the ladies ought to have votes," but they really
could not give their places in the ballot for the question; it was
always "anything but that," and during the whole of the week we spent
in the Lobby we did not succeed in adding one single promise to that
which we had originally received from Mr. Keir Hardie.
On the fateful Wednesday on which the result was declared, my mother
and I were the only women in the Lobby. We sat there on the shiny
black leather seats in the circular hall waiting for the result, and
at last we saw with relief Mr. Keir Hardie's picturesque figure coming
hurrying towards us from the Inner Lobby. He was so kind and helpful,
the only kind and helpful person in the whole of Parliament, it seemed.
At once he told us that his name had not been drawn in the ballot and
explained that only the first twelve, or, at most, fourteen, places
that had been drawn could be of any use to the Members who had secured
them, and that, owing to the limited number of days upon which private
Members' Bills could be discussed, only the first three or four had
even a moderately good chance of becoming law.[3] Our next move must
therefore be to get in touch with the successful fourteen Members and
to endeavour to persuade one of them to devote his place in the ballot
to a Women's Suffrage Bill. After considerable trouble we finally got
into communication with all of them, and they all said "No," with the
exception of Mr. Bamford Slack, who held the fourteenth place, and who
at last agreed to introduce our Bill, largely because his wife was a
Suffragist and helped us to urge our cause. Of course the fourteenth
place was not by any means a good one, and the Bill was set down as
the Second Order of the Day for Friday, May 12th.
In the meantime we drafted a petition in support of it and set
ourselves to procure signatures. One Sunday evening I went with a
bundle of petition forms to a meeting addressed by Mr. G. K. Chesterton
at Morriss Hall, Clapham. The lecturer's remarks were devoted to a
eulogy of the French Revolution, from which he asserted all ideas of
popular representation had sprung. An opening, which I seized, was
given for a question on the subject of votes for women in relation
to the Government of our Colonies. Whilst the audience were asking
questions and offering criticisms, Mr. Chesterton was busily making
sketches of us all, but, though I saw myself being added to the
picture gallery, in replying to the questions raised in the debate
afterwards, he did not answer my point. Afterwards, however, he came up
and told me that he had forgotten to deal with it and then gave me an
explanation. I had not asked, "Are you in favour of Votes for Women?"
I had assumed that he was and he replied on the same assumption, and
afterwards voluntarily signed his name to my petition. It was with
surprise, not untempered with amusement, therefore, that I afterwards
found Mr. Chesterton coming forward as an active anti-Suffragist, but
his attitude seemed to me to be an augury of our speedy success, for
he delights to champion unpopular causes and to oppose himself to the
overwhelming and inevitable march of coming events.
Many other women's societies, suffrage, organised petitions at this
time, for the fact of having a Bill before the House of Commons for the
first time for eight years, had sent a thrill of new life through them
all. The result of our united efforts was that, when the twelfth of May
came round, the Strangers' Lobby was densely crowded, and many of the
women had to be drafted on to the Terrace, or to stand in the various
passages leading from the Lobby. As well as the members of the various
suffrage societies, women of all classes, from the richest to the
poorest, were represented in the gathering, and amongst the rest was a
large contingent of women Co-operators, accompanied by Mrs. Nellie Alma
Martel, of Australia, who had helped to win votes for women there, and
had afterwards been run as a candidate for the Commonwealth Parliament,
having polled more than 20,000 votes.
Many of the women were quite pathetically confident that we were
going to get Women's Suffrage then and there, but those of us who
knew rather more, both of the stubborn character of our opponents and
the antiquated Parliamentary procedure which renders it possible for
a handful of obstructionists to block any private Member's measure
unless the Government will come to its aid, knew that the Women's
Enfranchisement Bill stood in a very precarious position. The question
which occupied the first place on the day for which our own measure had
been set down, was a simple, practically non-contentious little Bill,
the object of which was to provide that carts travelling along the
public roads by night should carry a light behind as well as before. We
had spent weeks in bringing all possible pressure to bear, both upon
the promoters of the Roadway Lighting Bill, that they might withdraw
their measure, and upon the Conservative Government, in the hope that
they would give special facilities for the further discussion of
the Bill. In both directions we met with a refusal, but we would not
give up hope. Finally on the very day of the Second Reading, when the
anti-Suffragists (as we had already foreseen would be the case) were
amusing themselves by spinning out the debate on the Roadway Lighting
Bill by pointless jokes and contemptible absurdities, Mrs. Pankhurst
sent a message to Mr. Balfour telling him that if facilities for the
passing into law of the Women's Enfranchisement Bill were not granted,
the Women's Social and Political Union would work actively against
the Government at the next General Election. This message produced no
apparent effect; and from the meeting of the House, at twelve o'clock
until half-past four in the afternoon, the discussion upon the Roadway
Lighting Bill continued. Then only half an hour remained for our Bill,
and this, amid irresponsible laughter, was "talked out."
The news of what was being done had gradually filtered into the Lobby,
and the attitude of the assembled women had changed from one of pleased
expectancy to anger and dismay. A feeling of tense excitement seemed
to run through the gathering. Some of the faces were flushed and
others white, whilst many had tears in their eyes. Especially amongst
the working women Co-operators feeling was running high. These women
were eagerly looking forward to the time when they would be able to
take their part side by side with men in settling the terrible social
problems with which they were met on every hand. They bitterly resented
the way in which they were being insulted by Members of the House of
Commons; they wanted to do something to express their feelings of
disapproval and when the order for strangers to leave the House was
given, many of them seemed disinclined to go. Then some of the women
who had been listening to the debate from behind the Grille in the
Ladies' gallery, came down into the Lobby and told us that a strange
man in the adjoining gallery had suddenly sprung up to protest against
the way in which our question was being "talked out," he had been
thrown out of the House by the police, and was now at the entrance to
the Lobby. This piece of news created a diversion. The women flocked
out to thank him. It was not until afterwards that we or they learned
that the man was one of the unemployed bootmakers who had marched up
from Leicester, and that he had not made his protest in our favour, but
because he saw that the House was wasting hour after hour in laughing
and joking, though the Government had assured him that it had no time
to attend to the grievances of starving men.
My mother now suggested that a meeting of protest should be held
outside, and Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy, the oldest worker in the Suffrage
movement present, began to speak. The women crowded round to listen,
but almost at once the police ordered us away and began striding in and
out amongst us and pushing us apart. We thereupon moved to the foot of
the Richard I statue, which stands just outside the door of the House
of Lords, but again the police intervened, till, at last, after much
argument, the Inspector of Police offered to take us to a place where a
meeting might be held. Mrs. Pankhurst then called upon Mrs. Martel, as
an Australian woman voter, to lead us and, joined by a single Member
of Parliament, Mr. Keir Hardie, we marched with the police to Broad
Sanctuary, close to the gates of Westminster Abbey. Here we adopted a
Resolution condemning the procedure of the House of Commons, which had
made it possible for a small minority of opponents to prevent a vote
being taken upon the Women's Enfranchisement Bill, and calling upon
the Government to rescue it now and carry it into law. The meeting
then dispersed, vowing political vengeance upon the Government if this
should not be done.
It will be remembered that during the summer of 1905 it was evident
to the most casual observer that the resignation of the Conservative
Government could not be long delayed. Mr. Chamberlain's Tariff Reform
proposals were causing dissent in the Cabinet, and the resignation
of several Ministers had already taken place. The South African War
had brought a measure of overwhelmingly enthusiastic support to the
Conservative Government but, as almost always happens in such cases, a
reaction had set in, now that the war taxes had to be met. At the same
time there was grave depression in the cotton trade, and consequent
distress in the industrial districts. In order to cope with the
trouble, Mr. Walter Long, on behalf of the Government, had introduced
a Bill to provide relief work for the unemployed. This had met with
serious opposition from his own party, and it had been subsequently
announced that no further time could be found for the discussion of
the measure. At this point the dispute which had arisen between the
Scottish Free Church and the United Free Church of Scotland had become
acute, and on June 7th, Mr. Balfour had introduced the Scottish Churches
Bill, which was hurried through its various stages and finally passed
on July 26th. It was urged that the Government ought not to have brought
forward this new measure whilst the unemployed workmen Bill, to which
they were already committed, had been set aside for lack of time. But
Mr. Balfour excused himself by protesting that he had been obliged to
carry the Scottish Churches Bill because a "crisis" had arisen.
The unemployed and their leaders now stated that if Mr. Balfour
needed a crisis to make him act, they would certainly provide him
with a crisis. An uprising on a small scale accordingly took place
in Manchester, in the course of which the unemployed, in spite of
police prohibition, persisted in holding a meeting in Albert Square.
Afterwards they marched in an irregular mass along Market Street,
spreading all over the roadway and obstructing the traffic. A struggle
with the police ensued, during which four men were arrested. The
question of the Manchester "riot," as it was called, was at once raised
by Mr. Keir Hardie as a matter of urgency in the House of Commons and,
as a result, it was hastily carried through its remaining stages,
though in a modified form.
We of the Women's Social and Political Union had been much interested
by the situation that had arisen, both in regard to the Unemployed and
the Scottish Churches, and we determined to profit by the example of
those who, by determined and decisive action, had secured a certain
measure of consideration for their claims. It was only a question
now of how much longer militant tactics were to be delayed, and as
to how they were to be inaugurated. A favourable opportunity for
their dramatic commencement had not yet presented itself, but there
was plenty of necessary propaganda work for the Women's Social and
Political Union to do.
One Sunday evening in June, Mrs. Pankhurst had been invited to speak
on Women's Suffrage to a meeting held under the auspices of the Oldham
Independent Labour Party. During the proceedings glees were sung by a
choir of men and women cotton operatives, and one of the members of the
choir was Annie Kenney, who was afterwards to take so prominent a part
in the Votes for Women Movement. Annie Kenney was deeply impressed by
all that Mrs. Pankhurst had to say, and shortly afterwards, when my
sister Christabel also lectured in Oldham, she asked to be introduced
to her. Christabel then asked her to pay a visit to our home in
Manchester, and the friendship which was to have such far-reaching
results began.
Annie Kenney was born at Lees, near Oldham. She was the child of
working-class parents, and, to supplement her father's earnings, her
mother, in addition to all her household cares, had been obliged to go
out to work in a cotton mill most of her married life. Annie Kenney
herself had early become a wage-earner, for at ten years of age she
secured an engagement as a half-timer in one of the Oldham cotton
factories. Then, wearing her heavy steel-tipped clogs, her fair hair
hanging down her back in a long plait covered by a shawl, she had gone
into the hot, crowded spinning mill, and working amid the noisy jarring
of the machinery as a "little tenter" at the disposal of three older
women, she had learnt to fit into place the big bobbins covered with
fleecy strands of soft, raw cotton; and to piece these same fleecy
strands when they broke, as they did so often, whilst they were being
spun out thinner and stronger. Once, as she seized the broken thread
in her tiny fingers, one of them was caught somehow and torn off by
the whirling bobbins. Whilst she was still a half-timer she worked
alternately, one week from six o'clock in the morning till midday
in the mill, and during the afternoon at the elementary school; and
the next week she spent the morning at school and four hours of the
afternoon in the mill. At thirteen, her school days had ceased, and she
had become a "full-timer," working in the mill from six o'clock in the
morning till six at night.
This premature launching forth into the world of wage-earners had left
its mark upon Annie Kenney. Her features had been sharpened by it,
and her eager face that flushed so easily was far more deeply lined
than are the faces of girls whose childhood has been prolonged. Those
wide, wide eyes of hers, so wonderfully blue, though at rare moments
they could dance and sparkle like a fountain in the sunshine, were
more often filled with pain, anxiety and foreboding, or with a longing
restless, searching, unsatisfied and far away. A member of a very large
family, Annie had four sisters--Nellie, Kitty, Jennie, and Jessie--who
came nearest her in age and had been her companions in the cotton
mill. In spite of the fact that they were constantly obliged to rise
at four or five in the morning, in order to reach the factory gates at
six o'clock, and on returning home were obliged first to help to do
the housework and prepare the evening meal for the rest of the family,
these girls were all determined to continue their education, and
they regularly attended the Oldham night schools. At the time when we
first met Annie, Nellie and Kitty, the two eldest of the sisters, had
both worked their way out of the cotton mill. Nellie had become a shop
assistant, and had soon proved herself so able that she had been put
in charge of two of her employer's shops, whilst Kitty had passed the
necessary examinations and had obtained a post as an elementary school
teacher, and Jennie, though still in the mill, was studying with the
same object. Jessie, who was but sixteen, was learning typewriting and
shorthand.
Annie, who was then twenty-five, was unlike her sisters in many ways.
She frequently said that she was not so "clever" as her sisters, but
when any decisive step was to be taken or any question of principle to
be decided, it was always Annie who took the lead. There is not much
that is beautiful in a small Lancashire manufacturing town, but what
little there was, Annie Kenney contrived to make the most of. She was
a regular attendant at the Church, and delighted in the beauty of the
music; the Whitsuntide processions, in which she walked with the other
Sunday-school children all in their white dresses, being vivid memories
with her still. She early commenced to carry on a literary campaign
amongst her work-mates and, having come across a copy of the penny
weekly paper "The Clarion," in which Robert Blatchford was publishing a
series of articles on his "favourite books," contrived to procure some
of the works which were there mentioned, and introduced them to her
companions.
On the few holidays which fall to the lot of the cotton worker, or
when the mills were stopped owing to bad trade, Annie Kenney and her
sisters and some of their favourite work-mates would put together a
simple luncheon and set off roaming for miles across the moors. The
grass and the trees might be blackened with the smoke of the factories,
the sight of whose tall chimneys the girls could never leave behind,
but, blighted as it was, this was the only country that Annie had ever
known, and it was all beautiful to her. When they had walked till they
were tired, the girls would lie down on the grass, and then they would
read to each other in turn, and Annie would talk to them about the
flowers and the sky.
Just as she was intensely alive to all that was beautiful, so too Annie
Kenney realised keenly the ugly and sordid side of life. When speaking
of her early days to a conference of women in Germany, in 1908, she
said:
I grew up in the midst of women and girls in the works, and I saw the
hard lives of the women and children about me. I noticed the great
difference made in the treatment of men and women in the factory,
differences in conditions, differences in wages and differences in
status. I realised this difference not in the factory alone but in
the home. I saw men, women, boys and girls, all working hard during
the day in the same hot, stifling factories. Then when work was over
I noticed that it was the mothers who hurried home, who fetched the
children that had been put out to nurse, prepared the tea for the
husband, did the cleaning, baking, washing, sewing and nursing. I
noticed that when the husband came home, his day's work was over; he
took his tea and then went to join his friends in the club or in the
public house, or on the cricket or foot-ball field, and I used to ask
myself why this was so. Why was the mother the drudge of the family,
and not the father's companion and equal?
From the first we found Annie ready with excellent ideas for spreading
our propaganda. In Lancashire every little town and village has its
"Wakes Week." The "Wakes" being a sort of Fair, at which there are
"merry-go-rounds," "cocoanut shies," and numberless booths and stalls
where human and animal monstrosities are shown and all kinds of things
are sold. In every separate town or village the "Wakes" is held at a
different date, so that within a radius of a few miles one or other of
these fairs is going on all through the summer and autumn. Annie told
us that on the Sunday before the "Wakes" almost all the inhabitants of
the place go down to the "Wakes-ground" and walk amongst the booths,
and that Salvation Army and other preachers, temperance orators,
the vendors of quack medicines and others seize this opportunity of
addressing the crowds. She suggested that we should follow their
example. We readily agreed, and all through that summer and autumn we
held these meetings, going from Stalybridge to Royton, Mosely, Oldham,
Lees where Annie lived, and to a dozen other towns.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] When the School Boards were abolished, Mrs. Pankhurst became the
Trades Council Representative on the Education Committee.
[2] In Booth's classic book, _Life and Labour in London_, the result
of a canvass of the then 186,982 women occupiers, shows that of that
number 94,940 were wage earners who were divided into the following
categories:--
Charwomen, office-keepers, laundresses 30,334
Dressmakers and milliners 14,361
Shirt and blouse-makers, seamstresses 6,525
Waitresses, matrons, etc 5,595
Tailoresses 4,443
Lodging and coffee-house keepers 4,226
Medical women, nurses, midwives 3,971
Teachers 2,198
On the basis of Booth's figures, Miss Clara Collett, the Government's
Senior Inspector for Women's Industries, writing in the _Journal of
the Royal Statistical Society_ for September, 1908, estimated that the
women occupiers of London might be divided as follows:--
Occupied women (who work out) 51 per cent.
Housewives (without servants) 38 "
Housewives (with one servant) 5 "
Housewives (with two or more servants) 6 "
[3] Even a first place is useless if the Government and the Speaker are
hostile.