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Section 17: Militant Campaigns

(17.1) In her book My Own Story, Emmeline Pankhurst explained why the WSPU changed their strategy in October 1905.

The Women’s Social and Political Union had been in existence two years before any opportunity was presented to work on a national scale. The autumn of 1905 brought a political situation, which seemed to us to promise bright hopes for women’s enfranchisement. The life of the old Parliament was coming to an end, and the country was on the eve of a general election in which the liberals hoped to be returned to power… The only object worth trying for was pledges from responsible leaders that the new Government would make women’s suffrage a part of the official programme.

The Bill was talked out! Peaceful methods had failed…. As the year 1905 went on, the Liberal leaders counted upon early political office. Manchester – the Free Trade Hall – was again to be the scene of a rally at which the Liberal Party would utter their war cry for the General Election. Here was my chance! Now there should be an act the effect of which would remain, a protest not of word but of deed. Prison this time! Prison would mean a fact that could not fade from the record.

Christabel Pankhurst decided that she and I would go the Free Trade Hall meeting, wait until question time (quite a legitimate way of getting answers to problems perplexing voters), then rise and put the question to Mr. Churchill: "If you are elected, will you do your best to make Woman Suffrage a Government measure?" Instinctively she knew that the question would never be answered, for two reasons: had he said Yes, the Cabinet would have practically been committed to carry it out; had he said No, the Liberal women would have pricked up their ears.

I was in the grip of a policeman and surrounded by stewards. I thought I must bring the matter into Court, into prison. For simply disturbing the meeting I should not be imprisoned. I must "assault the police". But how was I to do it? The police seemed to be skilled to frustrate my purpose. I could not strike them, my arms being held. I could not even stamp on their toes. Yet I must be arrested. The vote depended on it. With my limbs helpless. I decided to be arrested for spitting at a policeman." It was not a real spit but only, shall we call it, a "pout", a dry purse of the mouth.

Miss Christabel Pankhurst and Miss Annie Kenney were ejected and later arrested for obstruction outside the building. At the police court Miss Pankhurst was fined half a guinea for assaulting the police officers by hitting them in the mouth and spitting in their faces, and five shillings for obstruction, or in default seven days. Miss Kenney was fined five shillings, or three days. Rather than pay the fine the ladies elected to undergo the imprisonment.

Miss Kenney was released on Monday morning. Miss Pankhurst period expired this morning. By seven o’clock about two hundred people had collected outside the gates of Strangeways Gaol. When Miss Christabel appeared she was hailed with a great cheer and instantly surrounded by a host of male and female admirers. The first to greet and embrace the prisoner was her mother, Miss Pankhurst. Miss Pankhurst fell into the arms of her mother, and the two wept for joy after having been parted for a whole week. As soon as she could break away from her admirers Miss Pankhurst called out, "I will go in again for the same cause. Don’t forget the vote for women."

We rose at four o’clock in the morning to make the journey from Ashton-under-Lyne to Strangeways Prisons, to greet Christabel on her release. When we arrived at the prison gates, we found a large crowd had assembled, among whom I remember Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Eva Gore Booth and other members of the older suffrage societies. The two girls who only a week before had been flung out of the hall like criminals were now the central figures on the platform… Twenty years of peaceful propaganda had not produced such an effect, nor had fifty years of patient pleading which had gone before. The smouldering resentment in women’s hearts burst into a flame of revolt. There began one of the strangest battles in all our English history.

The first militant protest was decided upon by Miss Christabel Pankhurst, and announced by mother or daughter to a small number of the more active members of the Union. The body of members knew nothing of the plans until they heard with the public that it had been carried out… It was at this point that the sense of difference of outlook, of which I had always been conscious in my association with Mrs. Pankhurst and her daughter, became acute. I did not approve the line of protest determined upon. It seemed to me to provide a very inadequate outlet for the expression of our rebellion.

After 1903 the whole country, indeed we might almost say the whole world, rang with the doings of the Suffragettes, as the violent Suffragists came to be called. I would point out, however, that for at least two years of their activity, 1906-1908, while the suffered extraordinary acts of physical violence, they used none, and all through, from beginning to end of their campaign, they took no life, and shed no blood, either of man or beast.

I met some suffragettes down at the club in Littlehampton… They have come into personal first-hand contact with prison abuses. My hobby of prison reform has thereby taken on new vigour… I intend to interview the female inspector of Holloway prison,

and will take part in the Suffragette breakfast with the next batch of released Suffrage prisoners on September 16… I had a long talk with Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence. She mostly talked Woman Suffrage, about which, though I sympathise with the cause, she left me unconverted as to my criticisms of some of their methods.

I went to the Suffragette Office to see Mrs. Lawrence and to congratulate her on the meeting of the day before, inquire the latest news, and finally say: "You know my reservations as to some of your methods, but my sympathies are much more with you than with any of your opponents… I want to be of use if I can. Is there anything I can possibly do to help you?" A good deal of talk ensued. She said, "Yes," I could help them. Could I see to it that Herbert Gladstone was asked to treat the Suffragettes as political offenders, which they are, and not as common criminals, which they are not?

I go deeper and deeper in my enthusiasm to the women, and even for their ‘tactics’ as I understand it more and more – not only what they do, but what has been done to them to drive them to these tactics.

Women had tried repeatedly, and always in vain, every peaceable means open to them of influencing successive governments. Processions and petitions were absolutely useless. In January 1909 I decided to become a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union.

I must write you a line of deepest sympathy. I know how you must be suffering about Constance. We cannot disguise from ourselves that our old Constance has gone forever. I feel, whatever it may be in the future, for the moment she has passed out of the lives of her family. She has become an impersonal being, and no one will feel this so much as you.

On Friday, 8^th October 1909, Christabel Pankhurst and I were on our way to Newcastle. I had made up my mind that I was going to throw a stone. We went to the Haymarket where the car with Mr. Lloyd George (a government minister) would probably pass. As the motor appeared I stepped out into the road, stood straight in front of the car, shouted out, "How can you, who say you back the women’s cause, stay on in a government which refuses them the vote, and is persecuting them for asking it," and threw a stone at the car. I aimed low to avoid injuring the chauffeur or passengers.

I wish to call upon the Government to put Woman’s Suffrage in the King’s speech. In my agitation for reform in the past the next step after window-breaking was incendiarism, in order to draw the attention of the private citizen to the fact that this question of reform is their concern as well as that of women. I might have done with perfect ease a great deal more damage that I did. I contented myself with doing just that amount that would make my protest.

Those guilty of disturbances on Friday and Monday are a small and decreasing minority

amongst suffragettes… there cannot be more than a few hundred in all who have put themselves under the leadership of the Social and Political Union for the commission of lawless activities… The members of the East Grinstead Women’s Suffrage Society strongly disapprove of acts of violence.

The great majority of Suffragists of all societies are lovers of peace… In spite of provocation, women so far, have not, in their struggle for freedom, emulated the more violent deeds of men… If respectable wives and mothers from the Universities and girls from the mill, stand firm behind the individuals who do the inconvenient and (for themselves) dangerous acts, it is because they understand that although the sum of goodwill now in the world is probably greater than it ever was before, goodwill is ineffectual until it is applied...

After the Liberal leaders’ betrayal of the women in 1884 the Suffragists of those days fought patiently, quietly, a losing battle… This was the condition of affairs that confronted the younger generation of Suffragists six years ago. They saw how the spirit of the older women had been broken… They had tried in vain every "constitutional" means. And there seemed no other. But there was…

The Press, last November, dwelt in horror upon the fact that, among the women fighting for their freedom, one sent a stone through the window of the Westminster Palace Hotel, where a Bishop was dining! The Bishop was quite unhurt. But a Bishop! And at dinner, too. As a Minister of the Crown has reminded us, when men wanted votes they did not interrupt a Bishop’s dinner. They burnt down his palace.

The woman’s act was of the same nature as the breaking of the glass case, which must be done before you can ring the fire-alarm. It is the preliminary to warning people of a danger that threatens the community. Not to injure anyone, but by way of sounding an alarm.

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