THE FORMATION OF THE WOMEN'S FREEDOM LEAGUE. REVIVAL OF MILITANT TACTICS
In spite of its unprecedented growth the Women's Social and Political
Union was now approaching a very difficult crisis in its history;
little by little, differences of opinion in regard to questions of
organisation and policy had begun to show themselves amongst the
members of its governing body and finally, in September, 1907, a
reconstruction of the Committee and Constitution of the Union took
place. Now, although every one of the original founders of the Union
remained, a number of those who had for some time belonged to the
Central Committee left to form a new militant society called the
Women's Freedom League which opened offices at 18 Buckingham Street,
Strand,[24] and of which Mrs. Despard became Honorary Treasurer, Mrs.
Billington Grieg, Honorary Organiser, and Mrs. Edith How Martyn,
Honorary Secretary. At the same time a reconstruction of the organising
basis of the Women's Social and Political Union itself was effected,
and it became obligatory for all members of the Union to sign the
following pledge:
I endorse the objects and methods of the Women's Social and Political
Union and hereby undertake not to support the candidate of any
political party at Parliamentary elections until women have obtained
the Parliamentary vote.
All the prominent members of the W. S. P. U. who had not already done
so now formally severed their connexion with the political parties to
which they had at one time belonged. During the past year a useful
little weekly paper entitled _Women's Franchise_ had been started
by Mr. and Mrs. Francis as the joint organ of the various Suffrage
Societies, and in the month of October, 1907, _Votes for Women_, the
organ of the Women's Social and Political Union, was first issued as a
monthly paper, by Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence. Our members at once
volunteered to sell it in the streets, and were soon turning themselves
into sandwich women and parading about with its contents bills slung
from their shoulders, riding on horseback through Piccadilly with its
posters hanging from the saddle, selling it from decorated busses
and carriages, canvassing for subscribers and advertisers for it and
evolving a hundred and one devices to increase its sale. As a result
of these efforts both its size and circulation increased rapidly. In
May, 1908, it became a penny weekly paper, and in the beginning of the
year 1909 its circulation had risen to between 30,000 and 50,000 copies
weekly, and it was handed over by Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence to the Union
itself as a paying concern.
On October 5th a Woman's Suffrage procession was organised in Edinburgh
by the Militant and Non-Militant Women's Suffragist Societies, and
some four thousand women from all parts of Scotland assembled under
the shadow of Arthur's Seat and, cheered by upwards of a hundred
thousand people who had gathered to see them, marched thence to
the Synod Hall, where there was held a crowded demonstration which
overflowed into the Pillar Hall.
[Illustration: Selling and advertising "Votes for Women" in Kingsway]
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was in Edinburgh at the time, and was
asked to receive a deputation from the processionists, but, though this
was backed by many influential Scotswomen, he refused. When on October
22nd, he spoke at Dunfermline, in his own constituency, the Premier was
obliged, as Scotch "heckling" is a recognised institution, to reply to
the questioning of women as well as of men. He was asked: "As the Prime
Minister believes in Women's Suffrage, would he suggest some fresh
methods which we could adopt in order to gain our enfranchisement?"
He replied: "I think women ought to go on agitating, holding meetings
and pestering as much as they can, as all other men and women who are
interested in public questions have to do." Whatever this piece of
advice may have been intended to suggest, it certainly sounded very
much like a justification of the policy of "pestering" members of the
Government at their meetings.
For six months the Suffragettes had devoted themselves to strengthening
and extending their organisation, electioneering, the distribution of
literature and the holding of propaganda meetings of which, between May
and October, some 3,000 had taken place, including a demonstration in
Boggart Hole Clough, Manchester, attended by 15,000 people, another in
Stevenson Square, Manchester, attended by 20,000 people, and meetings
in Hyde Park each Sunday at many of which the audiences had numbered
upwards of 12,000. Nevertheless the question of Votes for Women, which
had bulked so largely in the papers whilst the militant tactics had
been in full swing, had almost entirely disappeared from the Press
during these latter months and anyone who judged from the newspapers
alone might well have imagined that the agitation had died down.
This fact, together with the Government's continued refusal even to
consider the question of granting Votes to Women, was enough, without
the Prime Minister's curiously provocative statement, to convince the
Suffragettes that the time had come to recommence an active militant
campaign, and from this time onward a Cabinet Minister's Meeting was
invaded on almost every day until Parliament met in the new year. Again
and again members of our Union, with a courage and perseverance which
too few people have ever recognised, presented themselves at these
meetings, and, having asked their question or made their protest, were
rudely set upon by crowds of stewards and flung fiercely and violently
out into the street.
Many outsiders preferred to look upon the women who faced this violence
as being harder and less sensitive or as differing in some other way
from the rest of their sex, but this was not by any means the case.
Many of those who bore the worst brunt of the battle were women who
had hitherto taken no part in politics, and had always led quiet and
sheltered lives. Others had had to fight hard for their livelihood.
Indeed they were of all ages and of all classes. Week by week greater
numbers of them were joining the Union and coming forward to take a
part in this work; but young and old, rich and poor, were treated in
the same way. Meanwhile Cabinet Ministers either expressed surprised
and horrified disapproval of their behaviour or sought instead to
cover them with ridicule. Mr. Sidney Buxton, at his meeting at Poplar
on October 12th cynically called to his women questioners, whom the
stewards were maltreating, to "behave decorously like men." That old
self-styled "friend" of Women's Suffrage, Mr. Haldane, addressing a
meeting of women Liberals in Glasgow on January 8th, 1908, devoted the
greater part of his speech to condemning the Suffragettes, saying that
men did not like to be fought with "pin pricks," and that, though women
might "wage war," he should advise them "not to do it with bodkins."
At a meeting in his own constituency, shortly afterwards, he insisted
that the women who interrupted him should be ejected by the police, and
when finally, with bruised and aching limbs and torn and dishevelled
clothing, they had all been thrown out of the hall, he treated the
whole matter as a joke saying that he was "bachelor-proof against these
belles." Mr. Asquith, like the Prime Minister, was forced to reply to
a question put to him in his own Scotch constituency, at Tayport, on
October 29th. There he said that, if the vote were granted to women
it would do "more harm than good," and that in any case, the House of
Commons is not elected on a basis of Universal Suffrage, for "children
are not represented there." At several meetings, notably those of Mr.
Asquith at Nuneaton on November 16th, and of Mr. Winston Churchill
in the historic Free Trade Hall, the stewards behaved with so much
brutality that the police intervened to protect the women.
But though at these gatherings of Liberal partisans the women were
usually flung outside without delay, there were still some occasions
on which the audience rallied round them. Incidents of this kind
occurred when Mr. Herbert Gladstone, now frequently nicknamed "the
prison Secretary," spoke in his constituency in Leeds on November 21st
and 22nd. On the first night the audience prevented the ejection of
women questioners, and on the second Mr. Gladstone was howled down by
both men and women, and next morning the papers stated in startling
headlines that the Home Secretary had been "put to flight." Mr. Lewis
Harcourt, the first Commissioner of Works, had a similar experience
in his constituency, the Rossendale Valley, on October 28th. During
the day he declared to a deputation of women that he was opposed to
their cause "because he was." At his evening meeting women protested
again so vigorously and in such numbers that it was broken up, and his
departing audience flocked to hear Mrs. Pankhurst, who was speaking
from a waggon outside the hall. On November 22nd Mr. Lloyd George
stated to a deputation of the Members of the old non-Militant Glasgow
and West of Scotland Association for Women's Suffrage that votes could
not be granted to women until the subject of their enfranchisement had
been made a test question at a General Election, and disposed of the
contention that this had already been done, because over four hundred
Members of Parliament out of 670 returned at the last General Election
had been pledged to support Women's Suffrage, by saying that these
pledges did not count because they had not been made to constituents.
As unenfranchised women were no man's constituents, Mr. Lloyd George,
therefore, evidently saw no harm in the breaking of promises that had
been made to them, and he gave no indication as to how, whilst neither
political party was prepared to put votes for women upon its programme,
women were to make their franchise a test question at election times,
except either by obtaining pledges from individual members or by
attacking the Government in power as the Suffragettes were doing.
He yet went on to say that he should oppose "very strenuously any
legislation that excluded any class of women from its scope, and any
measure to enfranchise women that would not give to the working man's
wife as much voice in the making of the laws of the country as her
husband possessed." This meant, of course, that Mr. Lloyd George would
"strenuously oppose" the Women's Enfranchisement Bill to give women
the vote on the same terms as those upon which it had already been or
might in the future be granted to men, but he did not seem to realise
that if he meant what he said and wished to act with honesty, fairness
and consistency towards this great question, he ought strenuously to
oppose the status quo, which not only refused a voice in the making of
the laws which governed her to the wife of the working man but to every
other woman beside.
On December 19th a strange drama was played out in Aberdeen. The
Liberal officials of the town, had succeeded in inducing the
Suffragettes to promise not to interrupt Mr. Asquith, if he would
answer the question of one woman, and they had begged Mrs. Black, the
President of the local Women's Liberal Federation, to be the woman.
Mrs. Black had agreed "in the interests of peace," as she said. When
she rose up to comply with the Liberal official's request, however,
she was howled at by their enthusiastic followers in the audience,
threatened by the stewards of the meeting, and told by the chairman
that she was "out of order," almost as though she had been a real
Suffragette. Though at last she succeeded in putting her question,
Mr. Asquith replied in snappish and hostile manner. Mr. Alexander
Webster, a Unitarian Minister and well known citizen of Aberdeen,
a slender, elderly figure, with long grey hair and the face of a
saint, was afterwards violently handled for trying to move a women's
suffrage rider to the official resolution. Finally Mrs. Pankhurst,
who was seated at the back of the hall, rose to explain the situation
to the curious and excited audience, and was immediately thrown out
of the hall. Then the meeting broke up in disorder. As the _Aberdeen
Free Press_ put it, "Many a Liberal left the meeting with the uneasy
feeling that the Suffragettes had had the best of it." Nevertheless the
Suffragettes were loudly censured for these incidents especially by
those who had consistently boycotted the Suffrage question when women
had worked quietly for it in the old days. In reply to the critics
Dr. George Cooper, an honest Radical and Member of Parliament for
Bermondsey, in the course of a letter to the _Daily News_ said:
My political life began as a member of the Reform League. It is
within my recollection that in 1867 and also in 1884 very few public
speakers who were opposed to the extension of the Parliamentary
franchise to men, whether members of the Cabinet or otherwise, could
utter a single word at a public meeting. Meetings were broken up,
platforms stormed and their occupants had to escape the best way they
could. In 1884 every Tory speaker used against the extension of the
franchise the same arguments now used by some Liberal speakers and
newspapers against the extension of the Parliamentary franchise to
women.... Why should women be condemned for using the same weapons men
found so useful when demanding the vote for themselves?... Cabinet
Ministers do not recognise antagonists using any other. There is one
fact which cannot be denied. The activity of the Suffragettes has
lifted the Women's franchise Bill out of the category of amusing and
frivolous debate into that of a serious political question.
Meanwhile the Suffragettes were fighting at two more by-elections.
The first of these was at Hull, where polling took place on November
29th, the result being that the Liberal vote was reduced from 8,652
to 5,623, and the Liberal majority from 2,247 to 241. The second of
these contests, one of the most striking at which the W. S. P. U. has
ever fought, was at Mid-Devon. In each of the seven elections that had
occurred in this constituency since its creation in 1885 a Liberal
candidate had been returned, the majority on the last occasion having
numbered 1,289 votes. The Suffragettes at once opened Committee Rooms
in the main street of Newton Abbot, the principal town in the division,
and published a manifesto calling upon every elector who wished to
see fair play for women to vote against the Liberal candidate, and
concluding "We want votes for women this year. Defeat the Government
in Mid-Devon as a message that women are to have votes in 1908."
The contest was a very trying one for the workers, for, in addition
to the extensive area covered by the constituency, it took place in
a season of heavy snow falls and bitter winds which came driving in
from the sea. Besides this there was a most turbulent variety of
human nature to contend with. The Mid-Devon Elections had always been
notorious for their violent character and the roughs of Newton Abbot
had long been a byword in the district. Early in the campaign the
speakers representing both candidates were frequently howled down and
were unable to continue their meetings, and, though on the whole we
fared very much better, we ourselves had some similar experiences. On
one occasion some of the Conservatives had arranged to speak at a place
called Bovey Tracey, but they fled away on being told that the Liberals
of the town were not only preparing to break up the meetings of their
opponents but had even built a cage in which to imprison them. On the
same day three young members of our Union had also appeared in Bovey
Tracey. They too were warned of the terrible cage, but decided to hold
their meetings in spite of it. All went well and they were told by
the men who met to hear them that they had no desire to injure those
who trusted them, and that the cage had only been built for cowards.
On one occasion it happened that Mr. Buxton, the Liberal candidate,
and the Suffragettes held simultaneous school-room meetings in the
same village. The Liberal meetings had been advertised several days
beforehand, but though ours was arranged on the spur of the moment,
all the people came to our meeting and not a single person turned up to
hear him.
As time went on the state of the district became more and more
turbulent and the great party newspapers, the London _Tribune_, _Daily
News_, and others, sought to stir up the wildest and most unrestrained
element in the constituency. The _Daily News_ hailed with enthusiasm
the formation of what was known as the "League of Young Liberals,"
which was in reality a gang of young roughs whose first act was to push
a policeman through the plate glass window of the shop which served as
our Committee Rooms. This and other violent acts were described by the
_Daily News_ as "diverting incidents with the Suffragettes," but the
special correspondent of the _Daily Mail_, said:
Miss Mary Gawthorpe, who usually has no difficulty in maintaining
good-humoured relations with audiences of every class, was not only
compelled to hear language from some of the Newton Abbot Liberal
partisans that brought a flush to her face and tears into her eyes,
but had to resist by force the efforts of one man to mount the waggon
from which she and several other ladies were speaking. And the most
pitiful part of the business was that the language and the conduct
seemed to be regarded by their perpetrators as engaging little
gallantries, appropriate to be offered to a lady.
A few days later the roughs dragged the lorry in which our women
were speaking round and round with such violence that it was feared
that it would be overturned, and they only stopped when a little boy
had been run over and trampled upon and seriously injured. Still the
Liberal politicians made no protest. Mr. Buxton's reply to a newspaper
correspondent who asked him what he thought of the disorder was: "You
must remember that they are keen politicians down here. From the fact
that Mid-Devon has had three elections within the space of four years
the people have necessarily heard a great deal about politics."
So the contest went on--Liberals and Conservatives smashing up each
other's meetings, howling each other down, pelting each other with
vegetables from the market and snowballing each other on Dartmoor. The
_Daily Telegraph_ for January 10th, writing in regard to a Liberal
meeting, threatened that, if the Unionists were not admitted, the
building would be stormed.
When on January 17th the poll was declared it was found that the
Liberal candidate had been defeated. Everyone was surprised except the
Suffragettes. The figures were:
Captain Morrison Bell (U.) 5,191
Mr. C. R. Buxton (L.) 4,632
_____
Unionist majority 559
At the General Election the figures had been:
Mr. H. T. Eve, K.C. (L.) 5,079
Captain Morrison Bell (U.) 3,790
_____
Liberal Majority 1,280
After the declaration of the poll Mrs. Pankhurst and Mrs. Martel, the
only members of the Suffragette band left in the storm centre of Newton
Abbot, saw Captain Morrison Bell escorted from the Market Square by a
strong force of police, and were themselves urged to hurry away and
leave the town at once. The warning seemed to them absurd, and Mrs.
Pankhurst laughingly said that she had never yet been afraid to trust
herself in a crowd. Immediately afterwards she and her companion met a
procession of young men and boys wearing the Liberal colours, who were
hurrying from their work in the clay pits. As soon as they heard that
the Liberal had been defeated, one of them pointed to Mrs. Pankhurst
and Mrs. Martel: "Those women have done it." Then the whole crowd of
them started running and from somewhere or other there came a shower
of rotten eggs. The two women were completely taken by surprise, and,
more anxious to avoid the eggs than the angry crowd, they rushed into
a grocer's shop, whilst a big brewer's drayman, who had been standing
by jumped into the doorway and fought their assailants off until they
were safe. The men and boys outside howled as their prey escaped them,
and the people to whom the shop belonged, though anxious to protect
the women, cried out despairingly that the windows would be broken in.
Mrs. Pankhurst at once said that she could not bear to be the cause of
loss to those who had sheltered her, and at her own request she and
Mrs. Martel were led through a back door and across a yard leading to
a narrow lane behind, whence it was thought that they would be able to
escape. As soon as the door had been shut upon them, their assailants
who had guessed their movements came rushing up. Mrs. Martel was seized
by one who caught her by the throat and began to beat her about the
head, but in a flash the shopkeeper's wife had heard the noise and had
opened the door again and, somehow or other, she and Mrs. Pankhurst
had rescued Mrs. Martel and had dragged her into the yard. The door
was shut and safely bolted in all haste, but just as it closed, a man
struck Mrs. Pankhurst a heavy blow on the back of the head, and, as she
staggered on the threshold, pulled her back and she was left outside.
Then the men gave an angry shout, and one of them, seizing her by the
collar of her coat and by her wrists, flung her to the ground. She
caught a glimpse of them all rushing on her, then for a time she knew
nothing until she felt the wet mud soaking through her clothes. There
was a pause. As she lay there looking at them, she saw that they had
all closed round her in a ring, and that in the centre was an empty
barrel. "Are they going to put me into it?" The thought flashed through
her mind. Hours seemed to pass as she watched them, all dressed in
drab-coloured clothes, smeared with yellow clay, and every one wearing
a red Liberal rosette. They all seemed to be puny half-grown youths,
and without knowing why she did so, she asked, "Are there no men here?"
For an instant they still stood. Then one of them came forward, and
she felt that whatever was to be done to her was about to begin, but
suddenly there was a shout, and the police came galloping up with a
crowd of rescuers at their heels. Her assailants turned tail, and she
was lifted up and carried back through the yard into the shop. A large
force of police now surrounded the premises, but a great crowd had
assembled, and it was two hours before a motor car could be brought
through it and the women were able to get away. The disorder did not
end here, for the rowdies flocked thence to the Conservative Club,
smashed every one of its windows, and kept its members besieged there
all through the night. Next morning the body of Sergeant Major Rendall
of the Royal Marines, an ex-Instructor of the Newton Abbot College,
was found in the mill race. Foul play was suspected, as he had been
severely bruised about the head. Throughout this violent disturbance
not a single arrest was made. During the whole course of the election
but one man was fined five shillings and costs for assaulting one of
his political opponents. Well indeed might the Suffragettes say that
the treatment meted out to them was very different from that extended
to men who were fighting on the Government side.
As a result of the attack which had been made upon her, Mrs. Pankhurst
was unable to walk for some considerable time, and her ankle was so
severely injured that it gave her trouble for more than a year, whilst
owing to the treatment she received Mrs. Martel will probably always
bear a scar upon her neck. Scarcely a word of regret for the violence
which had been done to these two women ever appeared in the Liberal
newspapers, who were so largely to blame for what had occurred. After
the election was over the Conservative politicians claimed that they
alone had kept out the Liberal and the Liberals also preferred to
attribute their defeat to the Tariff Reformers rather than to the
Suffragettes. Only one of the Liberal newspapers, the _Manchester
Guardian_ admitted both during and after the election that the woman's
question had played a decisive part. The Special Correspondent of this
paper, in the issue of January 20th, said:
I think there can be no doubt that the Suffragettes did influence
votes. Their activity, the interest shown in their meetings, the
success of their persuasive methods in enlisting the popular sympathy,
the large number of working women who acted with them as volunteers,
these were features of the election which, although strangely ignored
by most of the newspapers, must have struck most visitors to the
constituency.
An amusing proof that the Liberals in the district had considered the
Suffragettes to be very formidable opponents came to light in the
following mock mourning card which had been got out in expectation of
the Liberal victory.
In Fond and Loving Memory
of the
TARIFF REFORMERS AND SUFFRAGETTES
Who fell asleep at Mid-Devon on January 17th,
1908.
The Suffragettes and Tariff Reformers are now very sore,
And should see it's no use contesting Mid-Devon any more;
And the Hooligans of Shaldon you can send over and tell,
That a strong and Buxton Liberal has broken their Bell.
R.I.P.
Meanwhile the Suffragettes were fighting the Government at three other
elections--at South Hereford (Ross), Worcester, and South Leeds. The
result of the Poll at Ross was that the Liberal majority of 312 was
turned into a Conservative majority of over 1,000. The figures were:
Captain Clive (U.) 4,945
Mr. Whitely Thompson (L.) 3,928
_____
Unionist majority 1,019
The figures at the General Election had been:
Lieut.-Col. Alan C. Gardner (L.) 4,497
Capt. Percy A. Clive (U.) 4,185
_____
Liberal majority 312
FOOTNOTES:
[24] They afterwards moved to Robert Street, Strand.