Source Database

Section 16: The Women’s Social and Political Union

(16.1) Emmeline Pankhurst described the formation of the Women’s Social and Political Union in her book In My Own Words.

It was on October 10, 1903 that I invited a number of women to my house in Nelson Street, Manchester, for purposes of organisation. We voted to call our new society the Women’s Social and Political Union, partly to emphasise its democracy, and partly to define its object as political rather than propagandist. We resolved to limit our membership exclusively to women, to keep ourselves absolutely free from party affiliation, and to be satisfied with nothing but action on our question. "Deeds, not Words" was to be our permanent motto.

The Oldham Trades Council invited Christabel Pankhurst and Teresa Billington to speak on Women’s Suffrage. I had never heard of ‘Votes for Women’. Politics did not interest me in the least. Miss Pankhurst was more hesitating, more nervous than Miss Billington. She impressed me, though. She was more impersonal and full of zeal. Miss Billington used a sledge-hammer of logic and cold reason… When the meeting was over I drifted towards Miss Pankhurst. Before I knew what I done I had promised to organise a meeting for Miss Pankhurst among factory-women of Oldham.

Annie Kenney had come with instructions to rouse London. It was easy for me to decide that we should follow all the popular movements by holding a meeting in Trafalgar Square… I went at once to Keir Hardie for advice. He told us to engage the Caxton Hall for our meeting, and promised to induce a friend to pay for the hall and the handbills to advertise it. The press began to hover around the house; the Daily Mail had already christened us the ‘Suffragettes’.

(16.4) After joining the WSPU Annie Kenney moved to London to work as a full-time organiser. On one occasion she was asked to represent the WSPU at a meeting with Arthur Balfour, the leader of the Conservative Party.

Lady Balfour took me to see Arthur Balfour privately. When we arrived he asked me to tell him what I thought he could do for us. I had a long talk with him… There he sat in age armchair, his long spidery legs stretched out… He constantly sniffed at a small bottle. I wondered what it contained and thought the conversation might be upsetting him… It was time to go and he had not committed himself any more than I expected he would.

The Women’s Social and Political Union was formed by Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst and Miss Christabel Pankhurst in 1903, but the "militant movement" with which its name will always be associated, had not attracted any public notice till the end of 1905… By adopting novel and startling methods… they succeeded in drawing a far larger amount of public attention to the claims of women to representation than ever had been given to the subject below.

Minor breaches of the law, such as waving flags and making speeches in the lobbies of the Houses of Parliament, were treated more severely than serious crime on the part of men has often been. The turning of the hose upon a suffrage prisoner in her cell in a midwinter night, and all the anguish of the hunger strike and forcible feeding are other examples.

In 1907 the militant groups abandoned the plan upon which for the first few years they had worked – that of suffering violence, but using none. Stone-throwing and personal attacks on Ministers of the Crown were attempted. These new developments necessitated, in the opinion of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, the publication of protests expressing their grave and strong objection to the use of personal violence as a means of political propaganda.

Emmeline Pankhurst was at once recognised by me as a force, vital and resourceful. She had beauty and graciousness, moving and speaking with dignity, but with no uncertainty of mind and movement. Later I was to see her captivating the mob, turning commonplace men and women into heroes, enslaving the young rebel women by the exploitation of emotion…

To work alongside of her day by day was to run the risk of losing yourself. She was ruthless in using the followers she gathered around her, as she was ruthless to herself. She took advantage of both their strengths and their weaknesses… suffered with you and for you while she believed she was shaping you and used every device of suppression when the revolt against the shaping came… She was a most astute statesman, a skilled politician, a self-dedicated reshaper of the world – and a dictator without mercy.

We now felt the next move must be to secure an interview with the Prime Minister, and we therefore wrote to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman asking him to receive a deputation from the WSPU. He replied that he could not spare the time to see us.

Christabel was cut out for public life. Her chosen career, that of Barrister-at-law, had been checked by the refusal of the Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn to admit a woman as a student, so that the career of a political pioneer offered to her the finest kind of self-expression. Like all the Pankhursts she had great courage. She had a cool, logical mind, and a quick, ready wit. She was young and attractive, graceful on the platform, with a singularly clear and musical voice. She had none of Sylvia’s passion of pity – on the contrary, she detested weakness, which was discouraged in her presence.

Sylvia Pankhurst had given up career and status to go amongst the masses of the people in order to instruct them, and so to prepare the ground for the revolution, which they believed, would some day take place. There was a certain infantile look about her, because her face had the roundness and smoothness of a child. Quiet and shy in those days, she had surprised her friends by one brilliant success after another.

Annie Kenney seemed to have a whole-hearted faith in the goodness of everybody that she met… Her strength lay in complete surrender of mind and soul to a single idea and to the incarnation of that idea in a single person. She was Christabel’s devotee in a sense that was mystical; I mean she neither gave nor looked to receive any expression of personal tenderness: her devotion took the form of unquestioning faith and absolute obedience.

Mary Gawthorpe was a Yorkshire girl, very tiny, with a winsome face sparkling with animation, and with laughing, golden eyes. She had a gift of ready wit and repartee which, linked with imperturbable good humour, made her irresistible to the crowd.

My chief suggestion was that of intervention in elections. Claiming the right to vote, we would use every sort of endeavour to exercise that right in any form we could devise: an individual woman slipping into the polling-booth and dropping a voting paper into the sacred box; a half-dozen women rushing the door to cover a real or simulated voting attack… In all such action the women voting were to be some of those actually entitled to vote by existing law and debarred only by sex.

A hot-blooded Irish member promulgated the idea of a sex-relations boycott to pledge the young and desirable members on ‘no engagements, no marriage, no babies’ lines. But we thought this crazy and were fully behind Mrs. Pankhurst when she indicated that if it were unsuccessful, as it would be, it would only bring ridicule upon us, and if, by an unlikely miracle, it succeeded in part, it would create not sex-equality but sex-war.

The impression Elizabeth Robins made on me at Tunbridge Wells was disastrous. From that moment I was not to know again for twelve years, if indeed ever again, what it meant to cease from mental strife.

I talked to Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Sylvia. I admired their wonderful courage, but when they started hurting other people, I had to decide whether I wanted to go on working with the constitutional movement, or whether I would join the militants. Eventually I decided to remain a constitutional.

back to top