THE BEGINNING OF THE MILITANT TACTICS
ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT OF CHRISTABEL PANKHURST AND ANNIE KENNEY.
OCTOBER, 1905.
Whilst the educational propaganda work of the Women's Social and
Political Union was being quietly carried on, stirring events were in
preparation. The resignation of the Conservative Government was daily
expected. The Liberal leaders were preparing themselves to take office,
and every newspaper in the country was discussing who the new Ministers
were to be. A stir of excitement was spreading all over the country and
now the organisers of the Liberal Party decided to hold a great revival
meeting in that historic Manchester Free Trade Hall, which stands upon
the site of the old franchise battle of Peterloo. The meeting was
fixed for October 13th, and here it was determined that the old fighting
spirit of the Radicals should be revived, the principles and policy of
Liberalism should be proclaimed anew and, upon the strength of those
principles and of that policy, the people should be called upon to
support the incoming Government with voice and vote.
When the evening of the thirteenth came, the great hall was filled to
overflowing with an audience mainly composed of enthusiastic Liberals,
for the meeting was almost entirely a ticket one, and the tickets had
been circulated amongst the Liberal Associations throughout the length
and breadth of Lancashire. The organ played victorious music, and
then the Liberal men, whose party had been out of office for so long
and who now saw it coming into power, rose to their feet and cheered
excitedly as their leaders came into the hall. After a few brief words
from the chairman, words in which he struck a note of triumphant
confidence in the approaching Liberal victory, Sir Edward Grey was
called upon to speak. The future Cabinet Minister, in a speech full
of fine sentiments and glowing promises, named all the various great
reforms that the Liberal Government would introduce, and appealed to
the people to give the Liberal Party its confidence, and to return a
Liberal ministry to power. Whilst he was speaking, Sir Edward Grey was
interrupted by a man who asked him what the Government proposed to do
for the unemployed. Sir Edward paused with ready courtesy to listen.
"Somebody said the unemployed," he explained to the audience; "well, I
will come to that," and he did so, saying that this important question
would certainly be dealt with. Then he came to his peroration; he
spoke of the difficulties of administration, difficulties which were
especially great at the present time. "We ask for the Liberal Party,"
he said, "the same chance as the Conservative Party has had for nearly
twenty years.... There is no hope in the present men, but there is
hope in new men.... It is to new men with fresh minds, untrammelled by
prejudice and quickened by sympathy, and who are vigorous and true,
that I believe that the country will turn with hope. What I ask for
them is generous support and a fair chance." The thunder of applause
that greeted his final words had scarcely died away when, as if in
answer to Sir Edward Grey's appeal and promise, a little white cotton
banner, inscribed with the words, "VOTES FOR WOMEN," was put up in the
centre of the hall, and a woman was heard asking what the Government
would do to make the women politically free. Almost simultaneously two
or three men were upon their feet demanding information upon other
questions. The men were at once replied to, but the woman's question
was ignored. She therefore stood up again and pressed for an answer to
her question, but the men sitting near her forced her down into her
seat, and one of the stewards of the meeting held his hat over her
face. Meanwhile, the hall was filled with a babel of conflicting sound.
Shouts of "Sit down!" "Be quiet!" "What's the matter?" and "Let the
lady speak!" were heard on every hand. As the noise subsided a little,
a second woman sitting beside the first got up and asked again, "Will
the Liberal Government give women the vote?" but Sir Edward Grey made
no answer, and again arose the tumult of cries and counter cries. Then
the Chief Constable of Manchester, Mr. William Peacock, came down from
the platform to where the women were sitting, and asked them to write
out the question that they had put to Sir Edward Grey, saying that he
would himself take it to the Chairman and make sure that it received a
reply. The women agreed to this suggestion, and the one who had first
spoken now wrote:
Will the Liberal Government give votes to working women?
Signed on behalf of the Women's Social and Political Union,
ANNIE KENNEY,
Member of the Oldham Committee of the
Card and Blowing Room Operatives.
To this she added that as one of the 96,000 organised women cotton
workers, and for their sake, she earnestly desired an answer. Mr.
Peacock took the paper on which the question had been written back to
the platform, and was seen to hand it to Sir Edward Grey, who, having
read it, smiled and passed it to the Chairman, from whom it went the
round of every speaker in turn. Then it was laid aside, and no answer
was returned to it. A lady, sitting on the platform, who had noticed
and understood all that was going on, now tried to intervene.[4] "May
I, as a woman, be allowed to speak--?" she began, but the Chairman
called on Lord Durham to move a vote of thanks to Sir Edward Grey. When
this vote had been seconded by Mr. Winston Churchill, and when it had
afterwards been carried, Sir Edward Grey rose to reply. But he made no
reference, either to the enfranchisement of women, or to the question
which had been put. Then followed the carrying of a vote of thanks to
the Chair, and by this time the meeting showed signs of breaking up.
Some of the audience had left the hall, and some of the people on the
platform were preparing to go. The women's question still remained
unanswered and seemed in danger of being forgotten by everyone
concerned. But the two women were anxiously awaiting a reply, and the
one who had first spoken now rose again, and this time she stood up
upon her seat and called out as loudly as she could, "Will the Liberal
Government give working women the vote?" At once the audience became a
seething, infuriated mob. Thousands of angry men were upon their feet
shouting, gesticulating, and crying out upon the woman who had again
dared to disturb their meeting.
She stood there above them all, a little, slender, fragile figure. She
had taken off her hat, and her soft, loosely flowing hair gave her a
childish look; her cheeks were flushed and her blue eyes blazing with
earnestness. It was Annie Kenney, the mill girl, who had gone to work
in an Oldham cotton factory as a little half-timer at ten years of age.
A working woman, the child of a working woman, whose life had been
passed amongst the workers, she stood there now, feeling herself to
be the representative of thousands of struggling women, and in their
name she asked for justice. But the Liberal leaders, who had spoken so
glibly of sympathy for the poor and needy, were silent now, when one
stood there asking for justice; and their followers, who had listened
so eagerly and applauded with so much enthusiasm, speeches filled with
the praise of liberty and equality, were thinking now of nothing but
Liberal victories. They howled at her fiercely, and numbers of Liberal
stewards came hurrying to drag her down. Then Christabel Pankhurst,
her companion, started up and put one arm around Annie Kenney's waist,
and with the other warded off their blows, and as she did so, they
scratched and tore her hands until the blood ran down on Annie's
hat that lay upon the seat, and stained it red, whilst she still
called, "The question, the question, answer the question!" So, holding
together, these two women fought for votes as their forefathers had
done, upon the site of Peterloo.
At last six men, Liberal stewards and policemen in plain clothes,
seized Christabel Pankhurst and dragged her away down the central aisle
and past the platform, then others followed bringing Annie Kenney after
her. As they were forced along the women still looked up and called
for an answer to their question, and still the Liberal leaders on the
platform looked on apparently unmoved and never said a word. As they
saw the women dragged away, the men in the front seats--the ticket
holders from the Liberal clubs--shouted "Throw them out!" but from the
free seats at the back, the people answered "Shame!"
Having been flung out into the street, the two women decided to hold
an indignation meeting there, and so, at the corner of Peter Street
and South Street, close to the hall, they began to speak, but within a
few minutes, they were arrested, and followed by hundreds of men and
women, were dragged to the Town Hall. Here they were both charged with
obstruction, and Christabel Pankhurst was also accused of assaulting
the police. They were summoned to attend the Police Court in Minshull
Street next morning.
Meanwhile, as soon as the women had been thrown out of the hall, there
came a revulsion of feeling in their favour and the greater part of
the meeting broke up in disorder. Believing that some explanation
was expected of him, Sir Edward Grey now said that he regretted the
disturbance which had taken place. "I am not sure" he continued "that
unwittingly and in innocence I have not been a contributing cause. As
far as I can understand, the trouble arose from a desire to know my
opinion on the subject of Women's Suffrage. That is a question which I
would not deal with here to-night because it is not, and I do not think
it is likely to be, a party question." He added that he had already
given his opinion upon votes for women and that, as he did not think it
a "fitting subject for this evening," he would not repeat it.
Thus, within a few days of the fortieth anniversary of the formation
of the first Women's Suffrage Society (perhaps even upon that very
anniversary), and after forty years of persevering labour for this
cause, Sir Edward Grey announced that Women's Suffrage was as yet far
outside the realm of practical politics, and the two women who had
dared to question him upon this subject were flung with violence and
insult from the hall.
The next morning the police court was crowded with people eager to
hear the trial. The two girls refused to dispute the police evidence
as to the charges of assault and obstruction, and based their defence
solely upon the principle that their conduct was justified by the
importance of the question upon which they had endeavoured to secure a
pronouncement and by the outrageous treatment which they had received.
But though ignoring the violence to which they had been subjected and
exaggerating the disturbance which they had made, the Counsel for the
prosecution had dwelt at length upon the scene in the Free Trade Hall;
the women were not allowed to refer to it and, though it was evident
that but for what had taken place in the meeting they would not have
been arrested for speaking in the street, they were ordered to confine
their remarks to what had taken place after they had been ejected. Both
defendants were found guilty, Christabel Pankhurst being ordered to pay
a fine of ten shillings or to go to prison for seven days and Annie
Kenney being fined five shillings with the alternative of three days'
imprisonment. They both refused to pay the fines and were immediately
hurried away to the cells.
Now the whole country rang with the story. In Manchester especially,
the news created tremendous excitement. The father of one of the
prisoners, was, as we have seen, a Manchester man. Dr. Pankhurst's[5]
remarkable ability and learning, his wonderful eloquence, his wide
range of interests, and the number of causes in which he had taken a
foremost part, had secured for him an unusually large amount of public
recognition. There was scarcely a man or woman in the city to whom he
was not a familiar figure. Moreover, his fascinating personality, and
his well-known tenderness of heart, illustrated as it was by thousands
of kindly acts, as well as by his long life of service and sacrifice
for the public good, had endeared him to many of his strongest
political opponents. Whatever bitterness may have been aroused against
him by his strenuous advocacy of advanced and frequently unpopular
causes, had disappeared when the news of his sudden death, which took
place in the midst of a legal case that he was conducting on behalf
of the Manchester Corporation, had become known, and public sympathy
had gone generously forth to Mrs. Pankhurst in her tragic home-coming
when she had read of her great loss in the evening papers in the
train. Mrs. Pankhurst by her work on public bodies was also known of
course, and Christabel Pankhurst herself had recently attracted notice
because, having wished to follow her father's profession, she had
applied to the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn for admission to the Bar. Her
application had been refused on the ground of her sex, as had also a
request to be heard by the Benchers in support of her claim, but she
had not abandoned her endeavours to secure the opening of this avenue
of employment to women and she was now a Law student at the Victoria
University of Manchester.
Votes for Women in those days was regarded by the majority of sober,
level-headed men as a ladies' fad which would never come to anything
and the idea that it could ever be a question upon which governments
would stand or fall, or be associated with persecution, rioting and
imprisonment had been alike unthinkable to them. Therefore, for many
reasons, this trial and imprisonment came as a tremendous shock to
the general public of Manchester. Questions addressed to political
speakers by men in the audience both during and at the close of the
speeches were, as everyone knew, the invariable accompaniment of every
public political meeting in this country. These questions were almost
always replied to. When dissatisfied with the answer the interrogators
frequently began a running commentary of disapproval, which sometimes
terminated in their ejection, but not until they had become a source
of general disturbance to the meeting. These facts were of course a
matter of common knowledge, but the newspapers now ignored them and
treated the questioning of Sir Edward Grey in the manner adopted by
the two women in the Free Trade Hall as an absolutely new and entirely
reprehensible departure. They were all agreed that such behaviour
would inevitably injure the Women's Suffrage Cause of which, though
they had hitherto boycotted it, most of them now implied that they
were supporters. Extracts from two newspapers are enough to convey the
attitude which in varying degrees of severity was adopted by them all.
The _Evening Standard_:
The Magistrates were lenient in inflicting a small fine.... If Miss
Pankhurst desires to go to gaol rather than pay the money, let her go.
Our only regret is that the discipline will be identical with that
experienced by mature and sensible women, and not that which falls to
the lot of children in the nursery.
The Birmingham _Daily Mail_:--
If any argument were required against giving to ladies political
status and power, it has been furnished in Manchester, and by two of
the people who are most strenuously clamouring for the franchise.
The reason why the Press as a whole was against the women was of course
because every great newspaper in this country is a special pleader, for
one or other of the two great political Parties--the Liberals and the
Conservatives--and both these Parties looked upon the question which
the women were striving to urge forward, as something of a nuisance.
Unfortunately, vast numbers of people, instead of examining into and
thinking out a thing for themselves, begin, at any rate, by allowing
their opinions to be formed for them by the particular newspapers which
they happen to read. Therefore some people at once made up their minds
that the women were entirely in the wrong, because the papers said so.
Others, with strange obliquity of vision, because they did not like
the idea of women mixing themselves up in scenes of violence, found it
easier to disapprove of the women who had been ill-used than of those
who had ill-used them. Besides the unthinking ones, there were also
many who had become so much inflamed by Party spirit that their sole
idea was to whitewash and bolster up the Liberal leaders and to cast a
slur upon the character of any who had dared to turn too fierce a light
upon their faults and weaknesses.
But with all this the imprisoned women were not friendless and though
for the time being, stone walls and iron bars might prevent their
speaking, there were those outside who were determined to defend and
uphold them and to turn what they had done to good. The Women's Social
and Political Union at once published a statement explaining that in
view of the approaching general election the intentions of the Liberal
leaders with regard to Women's Suffrage had been recognised to be of
immense importance, and Sir Edward Grey had therefore been asked to
receive a deputation of members of the Union, in which the questions
it was desired that he should answer were clearly stated. No reply or
acknowledgment of this request had been received, and it had thereupon
been decided that two delegates from the Union should attend the
Free Trade Hall meeting to question Sir Edward Grey.
[Illustration: Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney]
Many who witnessed the scene in the Free Trade Hall wrote to the
newspapers expressing their sympathy with the women.
A "sympathiser" apologised for having helped to shout the women down
saying that he would never have done so had he realised what was
really taking place. On first reading the accounts, Mr. Keir Hardie,
the only Member of Parliament to come forward in support of the
prisoners, telegraphed, "The thing is a dastardly outrage, but do not
worry, it will do immense good to the Cause. Can I do anything?" Sir
Edward Grey's wife, Lady Grey, made no public statement but she told
her friends that she considered the women justified in the means they
had adopted of forcing their question forward. "What else could they
do?" she asked. Whilst Mr. Winston Churchill, fearing probably that
his approaching candidature in Manchester might be damaged by the
imprisonment of the women, visited Strangeways Gaol and offered to pay
their fines, but the Governor refused to accept the money from him.
On Friday, October 20th, a crowded demonstration was held to welcome the
Ex-prisoners in the Free Trade Hall from which they had been flung out
with ignominy but a week before, and now, as they entered, the audience
rose with raised hats and waving handkerchiefs and greeted them with
cheers. Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney did not speak of their
imprisonment. We knew that they had been treated as belonging to the
third and lowest class of criminals, and that they had been dressed
in the prison clothes, fed on "skilly" and brown bread, and kept in
solitary confinement in a narrow cell both day and night; that they had
attended services with the other prisoners in the Chapel and with them
had gone out to exercise in the prison yard, that they had performed
the daily routine of prison tasks and, losing their own names, had
answered only to the number of their cell. These things we know, but
_they_ refused to speak of them then, wishing that all attention should
be concentrated upon the cause of the enfranchisement of women for
which they had been willing to endure all.
But in spite of their own silence we have one picture of Christabel
during that first imprisonment. It was brought out to us by one of the
Visiting Justices, a friend of her father, who, in the hope of inducing
her to allow her fine to be paid, had gone in to see her in the prison
cell. He found her clad in strangely made, coarse serge garments, with
large heavy shoes upon her feet and with a white cap framing her rosy
face, and partly covering her soft brown hair. Seated on a wooden stool
she was working away at her allotted task--the making of a shirt for
one of the men prisoners. Her dinner, consisting of two or three small
sodden-looking unpeeled potatoes and a chunk of coarse brown bread,
was lying beside her and she was taking a bite of the bread every now
and then. "Don't you think you're a very silly girl to sit here eating
brown bread and potatoes and sewing that shirt when you might be freely
doing what you please outside?" the Justice asked her. But she smiled
up at him brightly "Oh, no," she said, "I always liked brown bread."
Fresh and bright and full of cheer as she had been in her cell, though
more serious, she was now, as she stood on the Free Trade Hall
platform to make her speech. When she began to tell the meeting of the
disturbance that had taken place upon the previous Friday there were
some cries of protest from Liberals who disagreed with her, but she
stopped them saying "I am sure you want to hear my side of the story,"
and when she had finished, Resolutions calling for the immediate
extension of the franchise to women, commending the bravery of the
released prisoners' action and condemning the behaviour of those who
had refused to answer their question were carried with tremendous
enthusiasm.
DR. PANKHURST--BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
In addition to his activities for Women's Suffrage, and indeed, for
all questions affecting the welfare of women, which have been already
referred to, Dr. Pankhurst had taken an important part in many other
reform movements. He had been one of the most distinguished of the
students of Owen's College which paved the way for, and became
incorporated with, the newer Victoria University of Manchester.
Having studied at Owen's, he had taken his B.A. degree at the
London University in 1858, his LL.B., with honours in Principles of
Legislation in 1859, and LL.D. with the gold medal in 1863. Called
to the Bar in Lincoln's Inn in 1867 he had joined the Northern
Circuit and become a member of the Bar of the County Palatine and
Lancaster Chancery Court. He had been Honorary Secretary to the
Union of Lancashire and Cheshire Institutes from 1863 to 1876 in
which years he had laboured zealously in the promotion of education,
devoting much time to visiting the various Mechanics Institutes,
which largely owing to his work were beginning to spring up as the
forerunners of the Technical Schools and Municipal Evening Classes
of to-day, teaching and addressing the students on educational
questions, and enlisting public sympathy in this important work.
Later, when in 1893, the subject of citizenship had, owing primarily
to his influence, been made a part of the teaching of the evening
continuation schools in Manchester, Dr. Pankhurst had issued a scheme
of political studies in the form of an outline of political and social
theory, and in 1894 he had delivered a series of addresses on the
"Life and Duties of Citizenship," which were afterwards published.
In 1882 he had become a member of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce
and was recognised to be an authority upon many commercial questions.
He was one of the earliest and most active workers of the Social
Science Association which did so much to educate public opinion upon
many questions affecting the welfare of women and the community in
general. Dr. Pankhurst had also been the author of many important
papers on the Patent Laws, Local Courts and Tribunals, International
Law, the study of Jurisprudence, and other subjects. He had interested
himself greatly in public health and the general field of sanitation,
and had been concerned in many public inquiries in regard to this
matter. He had been a life member of the Association for the Reform
and Codification of the Law of Nations, and had laid before that
body a scheme of international arbitration as a substitute for war,
a principle for which he had for many years strenuously contended.
He had three times been a candidate for Parliament, having contested
Manchester in 1883, Rotherhithe in 1885, and Gorton in 1895, but
because, admittedly, he was too fearlessly honest and outspoken he
had on each occasion failed to secure election. Even by his bitterest
political opponents he was respected, for it was a matter of common
knowledge that, for the sake of his principles, he had over and over
again sacrificed his own material advancement. He had begun life
as an advanced Radical, having been a friend of John Stuart Mill,
also of Ernest Jones, and other well-known Chartists. So long ago as
1873 he had been a pronounced Home Ruler. He had been a member of
the executive of the National Reform Union, and the declaration of
principles which he had issued in his candidature of 1883 has been
ascribed as "a third Charter in itself." By his fearless championship
of their interests, and his sympathy for them in time of trouble, he
had especially endeared himself to the working people. So early as the
days of George Odger and other leaders of the Labour cause, he had
taken part in a movement which resulted in the recasting of the labour
laws. He had acted as arbitrator for the men in many cases of trade
dispute. Whilst taking an active part in the effort to secure both the
later extensions of the franchise which took place in 1867 and 1884,
Dr. Pankhurst had, as we have seen, done all he could to get women
included under them.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] She had no connection with the two women, and no previous knowledge
that the question was to be put.
[5] See biographical note at the end of this chapter.