My own story
Voice," or that "Captain Z had the greatest difficulty in making himself
heard."
In accordance with this custom we heckle Cabinet Ministers. Mr. Winston
Churchill, for example, is speaking. "One great question," he exclaims,
"remains to be settled."
"And that is woman suffrage," shouts a voice from the gallery.
Mr. Churchill struggles on with his speech: "The men have been
complaining of me----"
"The women have been complaining of you, too, Mr. Churchill," comes
back promptly from the back of the hall.
"In the circumstances what can we do but----"
"Give votes to women."
Our object, of course, is to keep woman suffrage in the foreground of
interest and to insist on every possible occasion that no other reform
advocated is of such immediate importance.
From the first the women's interruptions have been resented with
unreasoning anger. I remember hearing Mr. Lloyd-George saying once of a
man who interrupted him:
"Let him remain. I like interruptions. They show that people holding
different opinions to mine are present, giving me a chance to convert
them." But when suffragists interrupt Mr. Lloyd-George he says something
polite like this: "Pay no attention to those cats mewing."
Some of the ministers are more well bred in their expressions, but all
are disdainful and resentful. All see with approval the brutal ejection
of the women by the Liberal stewards.
At one meeting where Mr. Lloyd-George was speaking, we interrupted with
a question, and he claimed the sympathy of the audience on the score
that he was a friend to woman suffrage. "Then why don't you do something
to give votes to women?" was the obvious retort. But Mr. Lloyd-George
evaded this by the counter query: "Why don't they go for their enemies?
Why don't they go for their greatest enemy?" Instantly, all over the
hall, voices shouted, "Asquith! Asquith!" For even at that early day it
was known that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer was a stern foe of
women's independence.
In the summer of 1906, together with other members of the W. S. P. U., I
went to Northampton, where Mr. Asquith was holding a large meeting in
behalf of the Government's education bills. We organised a number of
outdoor meetings, and of course prepared to attend Mr. Asquith's
meeting. In conversation with the president of the local Women's Liberal
Association, I mentioned the fact that we expected to be put out, and
she indignantly declared that such a thing could not happen in
Northampton, where the women had done so much for the Liberal party. I
told her that I hoped she would be at the meeting.
I had not intended to go myself, my plans being to hold a meeting of my
own outside the door. But our members, before Mr. Asquith began to
speak, attempted to question him, and were thrown out with violence. So
then, turning my meeting over to them, I slipped quietly into the hall
and sat down in the front row of a division set apart for wives and
women friends of the Liberal leaders. I sat there in silence, hearing
men interrupt the speaker and get answers to their questions. At the
close of the speech I stood up and, addressing the chairman, said: "I
should like to ask Mr. Asquith a question about education." The chairman
turned inquiringly to Mr. Asquith, who frowningly shook his head. But
without waiting for the chairman to say a word, I continued: "Mr.
Asquith has said that the parents of children have a right to be
consulted in the matter of their children's education, especially upon
such questions as the kind of religious instruction they should receive.
Women are parents. Does not Mr. Asquith think that women should have the
right to control their children's education, as men do, through the
vote?" At this point the stewards seized me by the arms and shoulders
and rushed me, or rather dragged me, for I soon lost my footing, to the
door and threw me out of the building.
The effect on the president of the Northampton Women's Liberal
Association was most salutary. She resigned her office and became a
member of the W. S. P. U. Perhaps her action was influenced further by
the press reports of the incident. Mr. Asquith was reported as saying,
after my ejection, that it was difficult to enter into the minds of
people who thought they could serve a cause which professed to appeal to
the reason of the electors of the country by disturbing public meetings.
Apparently he could enter into the minds of the men who disturbed public
meetings.
To our custom of public heckling of the responsible members of the
hostile Government we added the practice of sending deputations to them
for the purpose of presenting orderly arguments in favour of our cause.
After Mr. Asquith had shown himself so uninformed as to the objects of
the suffragists, we decided to ask him to receive a deputation from the
W. S. P. U. To our polite letter Mr. Asquith returned a cold refusal to
be interviewed on any subject not connected with his particular office.
Whereupon we wrote again, reminding Mr. Asquith that as a member of the
Government he was concerned with all questions likely to be dealt with
by Parliament. We said that we urgently desired to put our question
before him, and that we would send a deputation to his house hoping that
he would feel it his duty to receive us.
Our first deputation was told that Mr. Asquith was not at home. He had,
in fact, escaped from the house through the back door, and had sped away
in a fast motor-car. Two days later we sent a larger deputation, of
about thirty women, to his house in Cavendish Square. To be accurate,
the deputation got as near the house as the entrance to Cavendish
Square; there the women met a strong force of police, who told them that
they would not be permitted to go farther.
Many of the women were carrying little "Votes for Women" banners, and
these the police tore from them, in some cases with blows and insults.
Seeing this, the leader of the deputation cried out: "We will go
forward. You have no right to strike women like that." The reply, from a
policeman near her, was a blow in the face. She screamed with pain and
indignation, whereupon the man grasped her by the throat and choked her
against the park railings until she was blue in the face. The young
woman struggled and fought back, and for this she was arrested on a
charge of assaulting the police. Three other women were arrested, one
because, in spite of the police, she succeeded in ringing Mr. Asquith's
door-bell and another because she protested against the laughter of
some ladies who watched the affair from a drawing-room window. She was a
poor working-woman, and it seemed to her a terrible thing that rich and
protected women should ridicule a cause that to her was so profoundly
serious. The fourth woman was taken in charge, because after she had
been pushed off the pavement, she dared to step back. Charged with
disorderly conduct, these women were sentenced to six weeks in the
Second Division. They were given the option of a fine, it is true, but
the payment of a fine would have been an acknowledgment of guilt, which
made such a course impossible. The leader of the deputation was given a
two months' sentence, with the option of a fine of ten pounds. She, too,
refused to pay, and was sent to prison; but some unknown friend paid the
fine secretly, and she was released before the expiration of her
sentence.
About the time these things were happening in London, similar violence
was offered our women in Manchester, where John Burns, Lloyd-George, and
Winston Churchill, all three Cabinet Ministers, were addressing a great
Liberal demonstration. The women were there, as usual, to ask government
support for our measure. There, too, they were thrown out of the
meeting, and three of them were sent to prison.
There are people in England, plenty of them, who will tell you that the
Suffragettes were sent to prison for destroying property. The fact is
that hundreds of women were arrested for exactly such offences as I have
described before it ever occurred to any of us to destroy property. We
were determined, at the beginning of our movement, that we would make
ourselves heard, that we would force the Government to take up our
question and answer it by action in Parliament. Perhaps you will see
some parallel to our case in the stand taken in Massachusetts by the
early Abolitionists, Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison. They,
too, had to fight bitterly, to face insult and arrest, because they
insisted on being heard. And they were heard; and so, in time, were we.
I think we began to be noticed in earnest after our first success in
opposing a Liberal candidate. This was in a by-election held at
Cockermouth in August, 1906. I shall have to explain that a by-election
is a local election to fill a vacancy in Parliament caused by a death or
a resignation. The verdict of a by-election is considered as either an
indorsement or a censure of the manner in which the Government have
fulfilled their pre-election pledges. So we went to Cockermouth and told
the voters how the Liberal party had fulfilled its pledges of democracy
and lived up to its avowed belief in the rights of all the people. We
told them of the arrests in London and Manchester, of the shameful
treatment of women in Liberal meetings, and we asked them to censure the
Government who had answered so brutally our demand for a vote. We told
them that the only rebuke that the politicians would notice was a lost
seat in Parliament, and that on that ground we asked them to defeat the
Liberal candidate.
How we were ridiculed! With what scorn the newspapers declared that
"those wild women" could never turn a single vote. Yet when the
election was over it was found that the Liberal candidate had lost the
seat, which, at the general election a little more than a year before,
had been won by a majority of 655. This time the Unionist candidate was
returned by a majority of 609. Tremendously elated, we hurried our
forces off to another by-election.
Now the ridicule was turned to stormy abuse. Mind you, the Liberal
Government still refused to notice the women's question; they declared
through the Liberal press that the defeat at Cockermouth was
insignificant, and that anyhow it wasn't caused by the Suffragettes; yet
the Liberal leaders were furiously angry with the W. S. P. U. Many of
our members had been Liberals, and it was considered by the men that
these women were little better than traitors. They were very foolish and
ill-advised, into the bargain, the Liberals said, because the vote, if
won at all, must be gained from the Liberal party; and how did the women
suppose the Liberal party would ever give the vote to open and avowed
enemies? This sage argument was used also by the women Liberals and the
constitutional suffragists. They advised us that the proper way was to
work for the party. We retorted that we had done that unsuccessfully for
too many years already, and persisted with the opposite method of
persuasion.
Throughout the summer and autumn we devoted ourselves to the by-election
work, sometimes actually defeating the Liberal candidate, sometimes
reducing the Liberal majority, and always raising a tremendous sensation
and gaining hundreds of new members to the Union. In almost every
neighbourhood we visited we left the nucleus of a local union, so that
before the year was out we had branches all over England and many in
Scotland and Wales. I especially remember a by-election in Wales at
which Mr. Samuel Evans, who had accepted an officership under the Crown,
had to stand for re-election. Unfortunately no candidate had been
brought out against him. So there was nothing for my companions and me
to do but make his campaign as lively as possible. Mr.--now Sir