THE THIRD WOMEN'S PARLIAMENT, AND MORE MILITANT TACTICS
CALLS UPON CABINET MINISTERS. THE THIRD WOMEN'S PARLIAMENT. THE
PANTECHNICON VAN STRATAGEM. MRS. PANKHURST'S FIRST ARREST. MR.
DICKINSON'S BILL, THE FIRST ALBERT HALL MEETING AND THE BY-ELECTION AT
PECKHAM.
Incidents in the Votes for Women campaign now followed each other with
such rapidity that they defy the chronicler who wishes to note them
down. Because vigorous militancy was the order of the day, the Press
teemed with articles upon the abstract question of Votes for Women
and with notices of the doings of the Suffragettes. "SUFFRAGETTES IN
DOWNING STREET," "CABINET BAITING AS THE LATEST RUSE," "SUFFRAGETTES
IN CHAINS." These and others of the same nature, were the startling
headlines that one saw in the evening papers on January 17th and in the
morning papers of the following day. It was merely that Mrs. Drummond
and a number of other members of our Union, knowing that the Cabinet
was sitting to decide upon the questions which should find a place
in the legislative programme of the forthcoming session had made an
attempt to urge upon them the necessity of dealing with the women's
claim.
Whilst Press representatives were congregating in Downing Street, to
snapshot the Ministers and to gain material for foolish paragraphs
describing their appearance and manner of arrival at the first Cabinet
Council of the Season, and whilst police were assembling to dance
attendance upon the Prime Minister and his colleagues, three or four
of the Women appeared to demand an interview. The police pulled them
aside and the Cabinet Ministers brushed past as they tried to speak,
and when they applied at the door of the official residence, no notice
was taken. Then Miss New, well knowing that her words would be heard
both inside the House and by the crowd that was collecting in the
street, began to make a speech explaining what she and her friends
had come for. Before beginning, she chained herself to the railings
beside the Prime Minister's front door, both symbolically to express
the political bondage of womanhood, and for the very practical reason
that this device would prevent her being dragged speedily away. Her
example was followed by Nurse Olivia Smith and, whilst the police
were struggling to break the double set of chains, a taxicab drove
up and stopped on the opposite side of the street. Suspecting more
Suffragettes, some of the constables rushed to the door of the cab
which opened on to the pavement. At the same moment, Mrs. Drummond (for
it was she who had devised this stratagem), opened the cab door on the
road side and bounded across to the sacred Residence, where, as there
was no one to bar her progress and as she now possessed the secret of
the little knob in the centre of the door, she was inside and very near
to the Council Chamber itself, before a number of men, some of whom
she believed to be Cabinet Ministers, though owing to the violent and
hurried nature of her ejection it was impossible to make quite sure,
rushed upon her, and she was flung out and hurled down the steps. She
was then arrested, and shortly afterwards she and four of her comrades
found themselves before Sir Albert de Rutzen at Bow Street Police
Court, charged with disorderly conduct. They were found guilty and on
refusing to be bound, were sent to prison for three weeks. Instead of
placing them in the first division, as had been done in the case of all
the Suffragettes since the transfer of Mrs. Cobden Sanderson and the
rest of us had taken place in October, 1906, the authorities reverted
to the old plan of putting them in the second class.
On January 29th the King opened Parliament in great state, and four
members of the Women's Freedom League rushed in to the Royal Procession
and attempted to present him with a Petition, but were dragged back
and hustled aside by the soldiery and police. The King's speech did
not contain any mention of Votes for Women, and the Women's Social and
Political Union was already preparing to confer upon the subject at
a Women's Parliament to be held in the Caxton Hall on February 11th,
12th, and 13th. In the meantime the Members of the Women's Freedom
League had determined to make an immediate protest, and the day after
the opening of Parliament they set out to interview six members of the
Cabinet. Three of the ladies, Dr. Helen Bourchier, Mrs. Kennindale
Cook, a well known novelist, and Miss Munro, a Scotchwoman from Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman's constituency, visited Mr. Haldane at his
house at Queen Anne's Gate at 9:30. They agreed with the butler to wait
outside until Mr. Haldane could see them, but the Secretary of State
for War telephoned to the police, who soon appeared in force and placed
the women under arrest. The same sort of thing happened at the houses
of Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Harcourt and Captain Sinclair. Altogether seven
women were arrested and sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from
two to six weeks.
In the afternoon of the same day Mr. Asquith received a deputation from
the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. He then definitely
said that the Government would not introduce a Vote for Women measure
on their own account and also refused to hold out any hope that the
Government would allow of the passage of a private Member's Bill.
As they left the Treasury offices the so-called "Constitutional"
Suffragists agreed that Mr. Asquith's remarks would merely serve _to
incite the Suffragettes to further militancy_.
They judged rightly, for the next day nine members of the Women's
Freedom League called at Mr. Asquith's house at No. 20, Cavendish
Square, and, on being refused an interview with him, decorated his
area railings with "Votes for Women" banners and bills, and, using his
topmost doorstep as a platform, proceeded to address a crowd of some
seventy persons that had collected. Four arrests were the result. The
women were brought up before Mr. Plowden at Marylebone Police Court
and claimed the right to speak in their own defence, but Dr. Helen
Bourchier, the first who uttered a word, was stopped by the would-be
witty Mr. Plowden, who said rudely "Behave yourself! You are the
bell-wether of the flock." He then declared all the women guilty of
obstruction, and ordered them either to pay fines of forty shillings
or to undergo one month's imprisonment in the Second Division, saying
that he wanted them to understand that if they thought the punishment
light, it was because it was all that the Law allowed him to give them,
and adding "I do not consider it by any means a fair measure of your
deserts."
Meanwhile the reversion to the policy of treating the Suffragettes as
ordinary criminals instead of according to them the treatment usually
meted out to political prisoners, was being raised in both Houses of
Parliament. Earl Russell and others urged the Government that "the
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," but the Government
were deaf alike to appeal and warning.
The Women's Social and Political Union had long realised this, and
when the third Women's Parliament met in the Caxton Hall on February
11th, 1908, it did so with all the splendid courage and enthusiasm
for militant action that had characterised its predecessors. It was
now known that an excellent place in the private Members ballot had
been won, and on the Women's Bill, by Mr. Stanger, a Liberal, and it
was realised that before February 28th, when the Bill was to come up
for second reading, strong pressure must be brought to bear upon the
Government to prevent this Bill being wrecked as that of Mr. Dickinson
had been in the previous year. It was therefore with an added sense
of immediate pressing necessity that the women set out unflinchingly
for the old hard fight with overwhelming force. The motion to carry
the usual resolution to the Prime Minister was moved by Miss Marie
Naylor and Miss Florence Haig both London Members of the Union and both
Chelsea portrait painters, and then the whole Hall seemed to rock with
the noise of the cheers as the majority of the women present sprang up
to form a deputation.
Meanwhile an extraordinary scene had taken place close to the
Strangers' Entrance to the House of Commons. It had been anticipated,
of course, that the Suffragettes would make an attempt to lay their
Resolution before the Prime Minister and a great force of Police was
massed in readiness before the House. Just about four o'clock as
the long lines of men in their dark-blue uniform waited there, two
furniture removal vans slowly approached, coming up Victoria Street
and round by the green which surrounds the Abbey and St. Margaret's
Church, as though they were about to make their way past the House of
Commons and along Millbank towards the Tate Gallery and Westminster
Embankment. The first van went slowly by the House, the second crawled
leisurely in its wake and along the back ledge of the second van lay a
sleepy-looking boy, his eyes idly fixed upon a little man sauntering
along the pavement some distance away. Just as this van was passing
the Strangers' Entrance the little man dropped a handkerchief, then
suddenly the boy sprang from the ledge, the back doors of the van flew
open wide, and one-and-twenty women plunged out and made a rush for
the House of Commons. They were blinded by the broad daylight after
their long ride in the darkness of the van, and as they jumped, many
of them fell on their knees and groping helplessly, ran the wrong way.
Nevertheless there were some who headed straight for the doorway and
two of them managed to get inside, only to be flung back instantly,
whilst the police closed round and several arrests were made.
Meanwhile the body of women who had engaged to carry the Resolution
to the Prime Minister, had emerged from the Caxton Hall, and having
formed up four abreast in orderly procession, had begun to move quietly
forward towards the House of Commons. Large crowds had gathered to see
them whilst the police were drawn up on either side of the road, and at
one point formed a line across the thoroughfare. The constables pushed
and jostled the women for some time without altogether preventing their
passage, but at Broad Sanctuary, a large contingent of police entirely
blocked the way. Undaunted, the women pressed forward, and the crowds,
some with the idea of helping the Suffragettes, others from curiosity,
pressed forward too. The police charged again and again, and there
was grave danger that someone would be trampled under foot. When at
last the streets were cleared, it was found that some fifty women had
been arrested, amongst these Miss Marie Naylor and Miss Florence Haig,
Georgina and Marie Brackenbury, both of them painters, and nieces of
General Sir Henry Brackenbury, and Miss Maud Joachim, niece of the
great violinist.
The Suffragette cases came on next morning before Mr. Horace Smith at
the Westminster Police Court, Mr. Muskett, who prosecuted on behalf
of the police, then announced that on this occasion the authorities
had decided as before to prosecute under the Prevention of Crimes
Amendment Act of 1885, which enabled the Magistrate to inflict a fine
of £5 or, in default, to order imprisonment with or without hard labour
for two months. Throwing down a remarkable challenge to the women, he
added that there were greater and stronger powers in reserve which
could be enforced to put down disorder, for there was still upon the
Statute Book an Act passed in the reign of Charles II which dealt with
"Tumultuous Petitions either to the Crown or Parliament." He recalled
the fact that it had been stated by the judge at the time of the Lord
George Gordon riots that that Act was still good law, and, he said,
that the dictum still applied. The Act of Charles II provided that
No person whatever shall repair to His Majesty or both or either of
the Houses of Parliament upon pretence of presenting or delivering
any petition, complaint, remonstrance or declaration or other address
accompanied with an excessive number of people, nor at any one time
with above the number of twelve persons.
Penalties might be enforced under this Act up to a fine of £100 or
three months' imprisonment. In holding forth this threat to women who
might demonstrate in the future, Mr. Muskett again appealed to the
Magistrate to deal with those who were now charged with all the rigour
which he would apply to ordinary law-breakers.
The prisoners were then one by one brought in. Georgina Brackenbury,
tall, fair, and well featured, was the first to be put into the dock.
The Magistrate affected to take scant interest in the case, and in
spite of her own splendid courtesy of manner, addressed her with
pettish rudeness, and finally interrupted her statement with "That is
all nonsense." The whole of the proceedings were conducted in the same
spirit. But two women out of the fifty had been imprisoned before,
and these two, Mrs. Rigby, the wife of a doctor in Preston, and Mrs.
Titterington, as "old offenders," were ordered either to pay fines
of £5 or to suffer one month's imprisonment in the third and lowest
class. The other forty-seven women were ordered to be bound over in two
sureties of £20 to keep the peace for twelve months or to serve six
weeks' imprisonment in the second Division. With the exception of two,
whose absence from home was found to be impossible owing to the serious
illness of relatives, all the women chose imprisonment.
All these things were of course largely discussed in the Press. The
furniture van incident attracted the greatest attention, and the van
itself was likened by almost every newspaper to the wooden horse of
Troy. The _Daily Chronicle_ said:
The Suffragettes are essentially heroic. First they lash themselves
to the Premier's railings; now borrowing an idea from the Trojan
horse, they burst forth from a pantechnicon van.... A high standard of
artifice has been set and it should be maintained. The Trojan horse
would have been of no use if it had remained outside the walls, and
though curiosity could never be expected to prompt Members to drag a
deserted pantechnicon into the House, there must be occasions when a
large-sized packing case is taken into St. Stephen's.
The _Glasgow Evening Times_ called for a poet of Hudibrastic gifts to
rise and embody in heroic verse the deeds of the Suffragettes, and
asserted that "The daring attack yesterday evening on that citadel of
democratic liberty, the House of Commons, is of itself sufficient to
inspire a Homer, or at least a Peter Pindar." The _Evening News_ said
that until the Suffragettes had outwitted the policemen by the use of
the furniture van, they had never believed in the story of the Trojan
horse, now they knew it to be quite possible after all.
In the Women's Parliament it was the more serious side of the case that
appealed to us. We saw that the Government were preparing still further
to resist our just and moderate demands, and rather than concede them
were even ready to revive ancient coercive Statutes which the customs
and principles of modern times had caused to fall into disuse. This
Act of Charles II, with which they had threatened us, had originally
been passed to obstruct the growth of the Liberal Party, which first
came into existence in Stuart times. It was the political descendants
of those very Liberals who would now use this coercive Statute against
their countrywomen. Well might Christabel Pankhurst ask in the Women's
Parliament, "What would have been said if a Tory Government had done
this thing?" "This takes us back to stirring times, ladies," she told
the women. "At last it is realised that women are fighting for freedom
as their fathers fought.... If they want twelve women, aye, and more
than twelve, if a hundred women are wanted to be tried under that Act
and to be sent to prison for three months they can be found."
There was no militant demonstration on that day, but everyone knew that
something more was to happen, and on Thursday afternoon, the 13th of
February, when the Women's Parliament met for its concluding session,
a feeling of most extraordinary excitement prevailed. Mrs. Pankhurst
had just returned from the by-election at South Leeds, and the audience
listened eagerly to her account of the campaign, and especially to the
story of the torchlight procession and the wonderful meeting of 100,000
people on Hunslett Moor. In spite of the fact that police protection
had been refused at the last moment, there had been no disorder, only
sympathy and enthusiasm all along the route, whilst the vast crowds
that parted to let the procession through had joined on to it and added
to its numbers from behind, and some of the women had constantly called
out in broad Yorkshire: "Shall us have the vote?" to be answered by
others with cries of "we shall."
I have come to London, Mrs. Pankhurst concluded, feeling, as I have
never felt before, the seriousness of this struggle. I feel that the
time has come when I must act, and I wish to volunteer to be one
of those to carry our Resolution to Parliament this afternoon. My
experience in the country and especially in South Leeds has taught
me things that Cabinet Ministers who have not that experience do not
know, and has made me feel that I must make one final attempt to
see them and to urge them to reconsider their position before some
terrible disaster has occurred.
Then, amid some emotional excitement and cries of "Mrs Pankhurst must
not go," "We cannot spare our leader"--cries which were calmly set
aside by practical business-like Christabel, who announced that the
deputation was definitely chosen and that its thirteen members were
all prepared to be arrested and tried under the Charles II Act--the
Resolution was carried and Mrs. Pankhurst, Annie Kenney, and eleven
other women marched out of the hall, whilst almost the whole of the
audience flocked into the corridor and stood around the doorway to
watch them go.
Mrs. Pankhurst had been lamed in the cowardly attack that had been made
upon her at Mid-Devon, and had not yet recovered. Seeing this Mrs.
Drummond ran forward to get a conveyance. She saw none for hire, but
called to a man in a private dog-cart and asked him if he would drive
Mrs. Pankhurst to the House of Commons. He agreed, and the other women
formed up on foot behind the vehicle two and two abreast. The police
were already massed around in great force and the little procession had
moved but a few slow steps when a Police Inspector came forward and
insisted that Mrs. Pankhurst should dismount. She instantly obeyed the
order, signing to her companions not to protest. The twelve women of
the deputation at the same time hurried forward to re-form in double
line behind their leader, but the Inspector and his men dragged them
apart. Then the deputation, hemmed in by men, women and police on
every side, proceeded in single file as far as Chapel Street. There
the Inspector said they must not walk in procession. They therefore
broke into twos and threes, but when they came to the entrance of
Victoria Street the police entirely barred the way, and it was only
after a considerable struggle that they were able to gain the main
thoroughfare. There a vast concourse of people had assembled and right
in the midst of it one saw Mrs. Pankhurst wearing a long loose cloak
whose light grey colour made her figure stand out from the darkly clad
men around. She came forward with Mrs. Baldock clinging to her arm, and
tall, pretty, smiling young Gladice Keevil, her face a little flushed
and her soft hair blowing a little in the wind, walking on the other
side, and with the great crowd following and filling the whole street
around.
Scattered amongst the people behind and moving forward either singly
or in twos, the rest of the deputation followed. Close to Westminster
Palace Hotel Mrs. Pankhurst, who up to this point had followed in the
wake of a Police Inspector and carefully obeyed all the instructions
of the police, was arrested and taken through Parliament Square on the
side furthest from the House in the strong grip of two burly policemen.
Clad in her heavy travelling cloak, her face had grown white with
exhaustion, and she was evidently in pain, but no heed was paid to
her lameness, and she was hurried along at a brisk trot, and at last
disappeared down the narrow lane at the top of Bridge Street which
leads to Canon Row Police Station. Mrs. Baldock and Gladice Keevil, who
had refused to leave her, had for this cause been arrested and almost
immediately afterwards Annie Kenney was also taken into custody. Later
on the same fate befell Mrs. Kerwood of Birmingham and five others,
some of whom were not members of the deputation.
Whilst this was happening, the Women's Parliament was still in session,
and every now and then someone returned from the battle to describe
how events were going. Before the meeting closed our ever thoughtful
Treasurer, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, urged all not on the fighting line to
subscribe to the war chest. More than £400 had been raised when the
prisoners came back to us on bail at the rising of Parliament.
[Illustration: Mrs. Pankhurst carrying a petition from the Third
Women's Parliament to the Prime Minister on February 13th, 1908]
In the House of Commons itself the Government's hostile attitude
towards the Suffragettes was raised as a matter of urgency on the
motion for the adjournment, by Sir William Bull, the Unionist member
for Hammersmith, who showed genuine concern at the news of Mrs.
Pankhurst's arrest. Other members of the same Party followed by jeering
at the Government for the marked difference between their treatment
of the Suffragist women and the men who had been arrested for cattle
driving and similar offences in Ireland. Why was Mr. Ginnell, the
Nationalist Member for Westmeath, to receive the privileges of a first
class misdemeanant, they asked, whilst Mrs. Pankhurst and her comrades
were to be treated as ordinary criminals. Lord Robert Cecil raised a
laugh against the President of the Local Government Board, by pointing
out that when he, Mr. John Burns, had been in prison for inciting to
riot, the Government of the day had intervened to secure preferential
treatment for him. In reply to all this Mr. Gladstone refused to take
any action, saying that the women could come out of prison whenever
they liked.
When Mrs. Pankhurst and her comrades were brought up at Westminster
Police Court before Mr. Horace Smith, next day, it was found that the
authorities, who were perhaps disappointed at the way in which their
challenge had been accepted, had changed their minds and instead of
prosecuting the women as they had threatened under the Charles II Act,
had decided to revert to the old method of stigmatising the whole
affair as a mere vulgar brawl with the Police. Probably thinking the
true facts would arouse too much public sympathy, the prosecution put
forward as evidence an absolute tissue of falsehood, in which it was
stated that the deputation had set out from the Caxton Hall singing
and shouting in the noisiest manner and that they had knocked off the
helmets of the police and had assaulted them right and left. As we have
seen everything had been done most quietly, and Mrs. Pankhurst herself
had carefully complied with every order from the police short of
abandoning her intention to reach the House of Commons. Our rebutting
evidence was disregarded and Mrs. Pankhurst's own statement in the dock
was cut short by Mr. Horace Smith's saying, "I have nothing to do with
that. It only amounts to another threat to break the law, and it is in
no way relevant here. You, like the others, must find sureties in £20
for twelve months' good behaviour or be imprisoned for six weeks in the
Second Division."
Then as usual the women were hurried off in the van to prison, the
Holloway gates were closed upon them, and the Government settled down
to forget them as far as it could until next time.
February 28th was the day for the discussion of the Women's
Enfranchisement Bill, in moving its second reading, Mr. H. Y. Stanger,
whilst he carefully dissociated himself from the methods of the
Suffragettes, reminded the House that, if in the course of a political
agitation, excesses were committed, the authorities should search
for the cause of the discontent and apply an appropriate remedy. Mr.
Cathcart Wason, another Liberal member, but an anti-Suffragist,
declared on the other hand that the Suffragette movement was founded
on riot, and that the House should not "yield to clamour"; yet with an
entire lack of consistency, he went on to extol physical force, saying
that because in his opinion women could make no contribution to this,
they ought not to be allowed to vote. Evidently he forgot that, whilst
the whole trend of civilisation has been in the direction of mental
rather than physical dominance, in the age when physical force was
the governing power, women were actually members of the legislature
and, that they retained the right to vote for Members of Parliament
throughout the ages when its possession was looked upon as a burden
and until, having become a privilege, it was wrested from them. But
all this talk was mere word spinning. It was a pronouncement from the
Government benches, that was eagerly awaited. As last time, it was
Mr. Herbert Gladstone who spoke, and for the Ministry, and he soon
disclosed the fact that the Government was still determined to make no
move. It was the old story of opposition in the Cabinet and the old
excuse that no party in the House was united either for or against the
question. As for the Bill he himself intended to vote for it, for, he
said, making an important admission which his colleagues might well
have taken to heart, "It may be imperfect, but at any rate _it removes
a disqualification and an inequality which have been for so long a deep
source of complaint with great masses of the people of this country_."
Then Mr. Gladstone went on to make some very remarkable statements, of
which both he and the Government were afterwards to be reminded. He
said amongst other things:
Men have had to struggle for centuries for their political rights....
On the question of Women's Suffrage, experience shows that
predominance of argument alone--and I believe that that has been
attained--is not enough to win the political day.
In any reform movement, he went on to explain, various stages had to
be gone through; first there was the stage of "academic discussion,"
and the ventilation of "pious opinions" unaccompanied by "effective
action," but after this, he continued, becoming perhaps a little
carried away by his own words;
Comes the time when political dynamics are far more important than
political argument. You have to move a great inert mass of opinion
which, in the early stages, always exists in the country in regard to
questions of the first magnitude.... Men have learned this lesson and
know the necessity for demonstrating the greatness of their movement
and for establishing that _force majeure_ which actuates and arms a
Government for effective work. That is the task before the supporters
of this great movement.... Looking back at the great political crises
in the thirties, the sixties and the eighties, it will be found that
people did not go about in small crowds, nor were they content with
enthusiastic meetings in large halls; they assembled in their tens of
thousands all over the country.
"But," said Mr. Gladstone, "of course it is not to be expected that
women can assemble in such masses," but, "power belongs to the masses
and through this power a Government can be influenced into more
effective action than a Government will be likely to take under present
conditions."
Mr. Rees (Liberal) then made an attempt to talk out this Bill as he had
done that of Mr. Dickinson the year before, and, after firing off all
the jokes that he could think of, he fell back upon the Scriptures,
saying, "Jerusalem is ruined and Judah has fallen. As for my people,
children are their oppressors and women rule over them.... Because the
daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks,
therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the
daughters of Zion and in that day the Lord will take away the bravery
of their tinkling ornaments."
But at this point he was interrupted by Lord Robert Cecil who moved the
closure of the debate, and, on the Speaker's accepting the motion and
its being agreed to without a division, a vote was taken upon the Bill
itself, in which 271 members voted for the Bill and only ninety-two
against. There was therefore a favourable majority of 179, the largest
that had ever been cast in support of Women's Suffrage.
Unfortunately it now appeared that Mr. Stanger had been informed
beforehand that the closure resolution, which would prevent the talking
out of the Bill, would only be accepted on condition that he, as the
Bill's sponsor, would move that it be referred to a Committee of the
whole House instead of passing automatically to one of the Grand
Committees. Mr. Stanger had agreed to the condition and now fulfilled
the promise that had been exacted, and the result was that nothing
further could be done with the Bill unless the Government would provide
time for its discussion.
Had the Cabinet been prepared to act honourably and to stand by the
statement of their spokesman, Mr. Gladstone, the position would now
have been that, if the women who wanted votes could organise a series
of demonstrations which could compare with those held by men in
support of the various extensions of the franchise that had already
taken place, the Government would concede their demands and would
either provide time for the passage into law of Mr. Stanger's Bill or
introduce and put through its various stages a measure of their own
framing. The Women's Social and Political Union were prepared to accept
Mr. Gladstone's challenge.
When Mrs. Pankhurst and the other women had gone to prison, their
comrades of the W. S. P. U., at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's suggestion,
had entered upon a week of self-denial in order to raise funds for the
campaign. The thought of those who were in prison spurred on every
member of the Union to renewed zeal. Some went canvassing from house
to house for money. Others stood with collecting boxes at regular
pitches in the street. At the Kensington High Street District Railway
Station, for instance, four well known women writers, Miss Evelyn
Sharpe, Miss May Sinclair, Miss Violet Hunt, and Miss Clemence Housman,
were gathering in pennies all through those wintry days. Some women
sold flowers, swept crossings, became pavement artists and played
barrel organs. Poorer members obliged to work continuously for a
living, denied themselves sugar and milk in their tea, butter on their
bread, and walked to and from their work, in order to be able to give
something to the funds. The result of this week of earnest effort was
to be announced at a great meeting at the Albert Hall on March 19th,
to advertise which a great box kite, with a flag attached, was hanging
over the Houses of Parliament for a fortnight, whilst a similar flag
floated over Holloway Gaol to cheer the prisoners within.
Every seat in the great Albert Hall was sold long before the day of
the meeting, and hundreds of people were turned away at the doors.
The vast audience was composed almost entirely of women, and there
were 200 women stewards in white dresses. The platform was decorated
with flowers and thronged with ex-prisoners and the officials of the
Union, but as the sentences of Mrs. Pankhurst and eight of her comrades
were not to expire until the following morning, the Chairman's seat
which the founder of the Union should have occupied, was left vacant
and in it was placed a large white card bearing the inscription "Mrs.
Pankhurst's chair."
Throughout that great gathering there was a wonderful spirit of unity
and not one woman there could wish in her heart, as so many millions
have done, "if I had only been a man." No, they were rather like to
pity those who were not women and so could not join in this great
fight, for to-day it was the woman's battle. The time was gone when she
must always play a minor part, applauding, ministering, comforting,
performing useful functions if you will, incurring risks, too, and
making sacrifices, but always being treated and always thinking of
herself as a mere incident of the struggle outside the wide main stream
of life. To-day this battle of theirs seemed to the women to be the
greatest in the world, all other conflicts appeared minor to it. A
great wave of enthusiasm had caught them up and they were ready to
break out into cheers and clapping at the least excuse. Fate, in the
person of the Government, had provided an incident entirely in keeping
with their mood, for Christabel immediately announced that Mrs.
Pankhurst and the remaining prisoners had been unexpectedly released,
and Mrs. Pankhurst herself walked quietly on to the platform to take
possession of the vacant chair.
Then it was a wonderful sight to see the up-springing of those
thousands of women from those rows and rows of seats and tiers and
tiers of boxes and galleries sloping to the roof of the great circular
hall. There was a sea of waving arms and handkerchiefs and a long
chorus of cheers,--with no greater welcome could any leader have been
met. The founder of the Union stood there quite still in her dark grey
dress, and her face, usually pale, had that strangely blanched look,
which comes to prisoners. When, as the applause subsided, she stepped
forward to speak to the assembled women, it was evident that she was
deeply moved by their greeting, and as she told how the chief wardress
had come to her cell at two o'clock that afternoon to tell her that an
order had come for her immediate release, one felt that she was very
tired and almost overwhelmed by the sharp contrast between that great
brightly lighted hall, with its vast seething throng of human beings,
and the still silence of the prison cell. She had heard, she told the
women,--"for these things filter even into prison"--that the Bill had
successfully passed its second reading, but she said, and all present
knew that she spoke rightly, that if ever the Bill were to become an
Act, women must do ten times more yet than they had ever done in the
past.
"I for one, friends," Mrs. Pankhurst cried, and we knew that she was
thinking of the women she had seen in prison, "I for one, looking
round on the sweated and decrepit members of my sex, say that men have
had control of these things long enough and that no woman with any
spark of womanliness in her will consent to allow this state of things
to go on any longer. We are tired of it, we want to be of use and to
have the power to make the world a better place both for men and women
than it is to-day." She paused then and went on to express quietly but
with deep feeling her joy in this great woman's movement that a few
years before she had thought she would never live to see. The old cry
had been, "You will never rouse women," but she said, "we have done
what they thought, and what they hoped, to be impossible; we women are
roused." At those words they stopped her with their cheers.
Then Annie Kenney rose to tell the story of her first and only other
visit to the Royal Albert Hall, when she had gone there to ask of
the newly elected and triumphant Liberal Ministry, a pledge for the
enfranchisement of her sex. That night, two years before, she had been
received with cries of abuse and howled down by an audience of angry
men. "There seemed to be thousands against one," she said, "but I did
not mind because I knew that our action that night was like summer rain
on a drooping flower; it would give new life to the woman's movement."
And now Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, our Treasurer, was to come forward to
give yet one more proof that Annie Kenney's words were true. When the
treasurer had imagined that Mrs. Pankhurst's chair was to be an empty
one, she had planned that those present should place in it an offering
of money for the cause, but now she would be able to place that
offering in the founder's hands. Towards the sum that was collected
there was already the £2,382 11s. 7d, which had been raised by the
devotion and sacrifice of members of the Union during the week of self
denial; a promise of £1,000 a year till women were enfranchised, from
a lady who wished to remain anonymous, and a second £1,000 which Mrs.
Lawrence herself, in conjunction with her husband, wished to give. And
now it was for the audience to do their part.
Whilst the treasurer had been speaking, Mr. Lawrence had been arranging
a scoring apparatus. Then, one by one, twelve women rose up in the hall
and each promised to give £100. Their example was followed by numbers
of others. At the same time, promise cards, filled up by members of
the audience, were constantly being handed to the platform, where Mrs.
Lawrence read them out. At last the sum of £7,000 had been set up, and,
with a stirring call from Christabel to work at the by-elections at
Peckham and Hastings in which the Union was then engaging, the meeting
closed.
As it was in London, the Peckham election was of course most noticed
by the Press and, because it was so near its headquarters, the Women's
Social and Political Union was able to put up the biggest fight there.
On Peckham Rye, a stretch of common land where hosts of preachers and
speakers of all kinds are to be heard on every holiday, each of the
parties in the election, including the Suffragettes, began by holding
a meeting on the first Sunday of the contest. There was a good deal
of rather dangerous horseplay which ominously recalled the Mid-Devon
election, the Suffragettes being chief target of the disturbers. But
before many days were over the situation had entirely changed. Peckham,
as every Londoner knows, is one of that great forest of suburbs of
mushroom growth on the south side of the river. Its miles and miles
of dingy streets are lined with monotonous rows of ugly little houses
which the jerry builder tries to convert into villa residences by
disfiguring with heavy over-ornamented stone work and by planting a
useless pillar on either side of the narrow doorway. A large proportion
of these little dwellings are tenanted by at least two families, and
the district is given over to small shopkeepers and clerks, shop
assistants, teachers and those who belong more frankly to the working
classes. No one who can afford to live elsewhere chooses to live in
Peckham; it is full of honest worthy people, but there is nothing
romantic or attractive about it.
The Suffragettes opened their Committee Rooms in the High Street and
soon seemed to be everywhere. They were riding up and down on the
noisy electric tram cars and dashing along Rye Lane, where the cheap
shops are and where on Saturday nights you can buy everything for half
the usual price at the costermongers' stalls, chalking the pavements,
giving out handbills, and speaking at the street corners, and soon it
was found that these busy, active women had not only converted almost
everyone in the district to the justice of their claims, but had
captured the heart of the constituency. How had it happened? Partly, it
may be, because of the romance and colour that they had brought into
the humdrum Peckham life, but perhaps the following impressions of
"An Enthusiast" which appeared in the _Daily Mail_ in the midst of the
election will best explain the mystery:
Three happy girls, eyes laughter-lit, breezy, buoyant, joyous, arm
in arm, talking like three cascades, are making a royal progress
down "the lane that leads to Rye." Such is the head of the comet.
Just a glance at the tail. A heterogeneous nebula of human life--all
ranks and ages, both sexes and all professions, following, jostling,
bustling, hustling. Miss Christabel Pankhurst shakes herself free from
one of her supporters, and takes under her wing a barefoot, ragged
urchin, whose eyes are dancing with glee and pride, for his pals are
envious. Who is he that that gloved hand should rest caressingly upon
his shoulder? The girl and the gamin trudge along together. "Oh, ain't
she just sweet?" says a factory girl, "and fancy 'er abeen to prison!"
"Carn't she tork--my word?" chimes in her mate. "Why, she just shut up
them blokes as arsked the questions just like a man, she did!"
Her magnetism lies in her complexity, her bafflingness, her buoyance,
her radiant health, her colouring--that of the inside of a seashell.
She is so every inch alive--the very exuberance of life, body and
mind. Not the racked intensity that comes of nerves high strung and
over-active brain, but just that finger-tip aliveness which comes of
perfect health and perfect happiness in engrossing occupation.
This girl orator and organiser, martyr and crusader, holds and sways
her crowds by a very network of antithesis, and her rosy face is the
index of her complexity. Defiance chases demureness; she flings a
madcap word and then lectures you like a schoolmistress.
One moment reticent, grave, and serious, then simmering with mischief,
as she lays a Cabinet Minister or a man in the crowd safely upon
his back--O rash questioner! Then her wilfulness--that puckered
chin tells a tale--yet her willingness to listen and to learn. Her
melting, comprehending sympathy for the sorrowful and heavy-laden--her
rapier wit and repartee, but ever smothered in the white sugar of
good humour. All these you see--some, when sitting in the background
of the trolly, she seeks to hide from the public stare, which she
shrinks from with a maiden's modesty when not actually engaged in
speaking--others, when with lissome figure swaying, in rhythmic
sympathy with the outpouring words, she fastens her mind and yours
upon the point at issue.
And then her unconscious petulance. That green veil of hers tied
under her chin that would for ever get awry. Yes, she is very, very
feminine, and that is what will win the vote for women.
With a voice that never tires (nor ever tires the listener), she is
born to charm the ear with an ebb and flow of sweet sound--sound so
clear, so silver, so bell-like, now rising, now falling, now rushing
and tumultuous, now measured and tempered and austere--earnest
and grave--impetuous, a very volley, ardent, burning, scathing,
denunciatory--then sinking to appeal to low notes and something near
to sadness.
Shall I speak of her logic? It is inexorable. It is not on mere smart
retort that she depends when heckled--she has a good case and relies
on it. She is saturated with facts, and the hecklers find themselves
heckled, twitted, tripped, floored. I think they like it. She does,
and shows it. She flings herself into the fray, and literally pants
for the next question to tear to shreds. Her questioners are for the
most part earthenware, and this bit of porcelain does them in the eye,
quaintly, daintily, intellectually, glibly.
Look to it, Mr. Gautrey, or the witchery of Christabel will "do you in
the eye."
No, the electors of Peckham agreed, these Suffragettes were not the
sort of women they had read of. They were neither the "disorderly,"
"shouting," "abusive," "unsexed," "violent" creatures, nor the
"soured," "dry," and "disappointed" women they had been led to expect.
It was not merely the "enthusiast" in the _Daily Mail_ who testified
to the work that the Suffragettes were doing. Conservative newspapers,
though they generally preferred to ignore the Suffragettes because,
though opposing the Government, they were not supporting either the
Conservative candidates or their proposals, nevertheless they allowed
some of the truths that the special correspondent told them about the
women's campaign to filter into their columns.
The _Standard_ said: "These women are prepared to kill themselves with
fatigue and exposure, not for the vote but for what the vote means."
The _By-Stander_ said: "The ladies' tongues have been tireless and
their brains inexhaustible. Of all the assembled bodies, and their
name was legion, who thronged Peckham, theirs has been the most
persistent." The _Pall Mall Gazette_ said: "Everybody seems agreed
that the best speeches in the election are being made by the lady
Suffragists," whilst the _Daily Mail_ asserted that "in no contest have
the Suffragettes figured so largely or done such harm to the Radical
candidate."
There is a type of man who will sometimes ask a woman's advice about
politics and may even admit that she is not only a better speaker than
he is but knows more about public questions than he will ever know, and
who yet thinks it quite tolerable that she should be forever debarred
from voting, though he has had that privilege since he was twenty-one.
Men of this type are usually great followers of Party, and allow their
ideas of right and wrong in politics to be almost entirely dictated
by the actions of the very fallible gentlemen who happen to be their
Party leaders. Liberals of this type, whether editors of newspapers,
journalists, Members of Parliament, or merely rank and file, had always
condemned the Suffragettes because the Liberal party happened to be
attacked by them.
The Suffragette opposition at Peckham caused them to be more indignant
than ever, for Peckham was a Liberal seat that had been held at the
last election by the great majority of 2,339 votes, and if this big
majority were to be pulled down they feared that the House of Lords
would be emboldened to throw out the Government's Licensing Bill which
was then being debated in Parliament. It was true that, though the
Liberals now spoke of this Bill as being of paramount importance, they
had themselves been just as keen upon a host of other questions and had
over and over again before this called upon the Suffragettes to stand
aside and refrain from pressing their claim at what on each occasion
they assured them was _the crisis_ of all crises. First it had been
that the Liberal Government might come safely into power that they had
charged the women to wait, then that Free Trade might be put out of
danger, then for the passage of the Education Bill, the Plural Voting
Bill and every measure put forward. In every case they assumed that the
proposal advanced by the Liberal Cabinet was the only possible solution
of the problem and in spite of the differences of opinion amongst men,
they maintained that no right-minded woman could conscientiously wish
for any other.
When it came to the question of the Licensing Bill, the Liberal
politicians declared that the sole issue of the election was between
the Licensing Bill on the one hand and intemperance on the other. This
was absurd, for if the Liberals wished to be rid of the Suffragette
opposition, they had only to remove their veto from the Woman's Bill.
On the morning after their release from Holloway, Mrs. Pankhurst and
the other ex-prisoners drove off to Peckham in brakes and paraded the
constituency holding meetings at various points, and worked there
incessantly until the end. A procession of their own ex-prisoners
was also organised by the Suffragettes of the Women's Freedom League
who were also helping to fight the Government in this election. The
Liberals retorted by displaying a big stocking, blue, the Peckham
Liberals colour, labelled, "since my wife turned Suffragette I can't
get my stockings darned!" but this fell very flat. On polling day the
_Star_ showed its belief in the strong influence which women were
exerting in the election, by making its final appeal on behalf of
the Government candidate, not to the men voters but to the women of
Peckham. The Suffragettes were stationed at every polling booth, and,
as the voters passed in, many of those who had hitherto voted for the
Liberal party handed their colours and polling cards to the women with
a promise to vote against the Government on this occasion. On seeing
this one of the Liberal officials became so angry that he threatened to
prosecute a member of the Freedom League under the Corrupt Practices
Act.
In the evening after the poll closed, Mrs. Drummond, upon whom the
organisation of the Suffragettes' campaign had chiefly fallen, and
who had been too busy all day even to get a meal, repaired to the Town
Hall where the votes were being counted. As she stood waiting on the
steps, weariness showing at last in every line of her bonnie round face
and sturdy little figure, the door-keeper, invited her to rest in the
entrance hall until the result was known. Presently she heard a loud
burst of shouting, and a number of men, in the midst of whom was Mr.
Winston Churchill, came running down the stairs from the count. She
started up, eager to learn the news, but was swept out into the street
in the midst of those who were impetuously rushing on. At that moment
there flared out a magnesium light--red, the Conservative colour. It
was known that the Government candidate had been defeated,[25] and the
huge crowd outside broke into cheers. Mr. Churchill was pushed about
like anyone else, and had to work his way out of the throng, but the
working men seeing Mrs. Drummond there, a worker like themselves, who
had been labouring strenuously amongst them during the past week, and
whom they all thoroughly respected, crowded round her cheering, and as
her husband's constituents did to little Scotch Maggie in Mr. Barrie's
play "What Every Woman Knows," they lifted her shoulder-high, and bore
her in triumph down the street. But Mrs. Drummond felt exceedingly
uncomfortable in this exalted state, and, asking to be released,
hurriedly sped away.
Now that their late majority of 2,339 had been turned into a majority
for the Conservatives of 2,494, the Liberals proceeded to heap abuse
upon the electors and to assert that the contest had been disgraced
by unprecedented corruption and insobriety. But the experience of
the Suffragettes was that the election was one of the most sober and
orderly that they had ever attended, and their feeling was that the
defeat of the Liberal candidate was very much more largely due to
the Government's refusal to grant votes to women and to its coercive
treatment of the women's movement than to any other cause. This opinion
was shared by many others. Dr. Robert Esler, the Divisional Surgeon for
Peckham, wrote to the _Daily Telegraph_ as follows:
_Sir_:
The statement was advanced several times that the new member was
floated into the House on beer.... Lest others should infer from the
words that the electors constitute a drunken community, may I, being
in a position to know the facts, indicate them.... During the ten days
of intense tension in canvassing and speaking, there was literally no
insobriety.... The charges at the police station fell much below the
usual low average, ... and there was not a single assault case....
In my opinion a high moral tone was imparted at the beginning by the
presence on the Rye of the ladies who took part in the proceedings.
Their dignified demeanour and cultured oratory made a profound
impression, and I think this should not be overlooked when considering
the result.
Mr. St. John G. Ervine wrote to the Liberal organ, _The Nation_, on
March 28th, saying:
There is not a man in the National Liberal Club to-day who does not
know that Mid-Devon was lost to the Liberals because of the adverse
action of the militant suffragists, a fact which was patent even to
the rowdy mob who rolled Mrs. Pankhurst in the mud when the result
of that poll was declared. There is not a Liberal member to-day who
does not dread the prospect of a General Election with the absolute
certainty that he will have to fight, not only the usual enemy, but
also a very determined body, which, at the present time, has no
political creed other than that expressed in the three words "Votes
for Women." I am wrong, there is one man who does not seem to realise
all this, to whom Mid-Devon was not a warning, to whom Peckham will
convey no sign of further trouble, the Premier elect, Mr. Asquith....
This Peckham election has been a revelation to me of the perfectly
wonderful forces which the Women's Social and Political Union are
bringing to bear on by-elections.... As a purely impartial observer
of the Peckham election I submit to you, Sir, and to the Liberal
party, that it is time they started doing something for the women. The
mandate might not have been there in 1906, but it most certainly is
there now.
Mr. Gooch, the successful candidate, stated: "A great feature of this
election has been the activity of the supporters of women's suffrage."
And even the _Daily News_, which published a correspondence from its
readers dealing with the Liberal defeat at Peckham, stated in its issue
of March 31st, that the majority of the letters received referred to
the action taken by the Suffragettes.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] The figures were:
Mr. C. A. Gooch (C) 6,970
Mr. T. Gautrey (L) 4,476
_____
Majority 2,494
The figures at the General Election had been:
Mr. Charles G. Clarke (L) 5,903
Sir F. G. Banbury (C) 3,564