My own story
as women, cried out that we had alienated all our friends in Parliament;
but this proved to be untrue. Indeed, it was found that a Liberal
member, Mr. Dickinson, had won the first place in the ballot, and had
announced that he intended to use it to introduce a women's suffrage
bill. More than this, the prime minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman,
promised to give the bill his support. For a time, a very short time, it
is true, we felt that the hour of our freedom might be at hand, that our
prisoners had perhaps already won us our precious symbol--the vote.
Soon, however, a number of professed suffragists in the House began to
complain that Mr. Dickinson's bill, practically the original bill, was
not "democratic" enough, that it would enfranchise only the women of the
upper classes--to which, by the way, most of them belonged. That this
was not true had been proved again and again from the municipal
registers, which showed a majority of working women's names as qualified
householders. The contention was but a shallow excuse, and we knew it.
Therefore we were not surprised when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
departed from his pledge of support, and allowed the bill to be talked
out.
Following this event, the second Women's Parliament assembled, on the
afternoon of March 20, 1907. As before, we adopted a resolution calling
upon the Government to introduce an official suffrage measure, and again
we voted to send the resolution from the hall to the Prime Minister.
Lady Harberton was chosen to lead the deputation, and instantly hundreds
of women sprang up and volunteered to accompany her. This time the
police met the women at the door of the hall, and another useless,
disgraceful scene of barbarous, brute-force opposition took place.
Something like one thousand police had been sent out to guard the House
of Commons from the peaceful invasion of a few hundred women. All
afternoon and evening we kept Caxton Hall open, the women returning
every now and again, singly and in small groups, to have their bruises
bathed, or their torn clothing repaired. As night fell the crowds in the
street grew denser, and the struggle between the women and the police
became more desperate. Lady Harberton, we heard, had succeeded in
reaching the entrance to the House of Commons, nay, had actually managed
to press past the sentries into the lobby, but her resolution had not
been presented to the Prime Minister. She and many others were arrested
before the police at last succeeded in clearing the streets, and the
dreadful affair was over.
The next day, in Westminster police court, the magistrate meted out
sentences varying from twenty shillings or fourteen days to forty
shillings or one month's imprisonment. Two of the women, Miss Woodlock
and Mrs. Chatterton, who had left Holloway only a week before, were, as
"old offenders," given thirty days without the option of a fine. Another
woman, Mary Leigh, was given thirty days because she offended the
magistrate's dignity by hanging a "Votes for Women" banner over the edge
of the dock. Those of my readers who are unable to connect the word
"militancy" with anything milder than arson are invited to reflect that
within the first two months of the year 1907 the English Government sent
to prison one hundred and thirty women whose "militancy" consisted
merely of trying to carry a resolution from a hall to the Prime Minister
in the House of Commons. Our crime was called obstructing the police. It
will be seen that it was the police who did the obstructing.
It may be asked why neither of these deputations was led by me
personally. The reason was that I was needed in another capacity, that
of leader and supervisor of the suffrage forces in the field to defeat
Government candidates at by-elections. On the night of the second
"riot," while our women were still struggling in the streets, I left
London for Hexham in Northumberland, where by our work the majority of
the Liberal candidate was reduced by a thousand votes. Seven more
by-elections followed in rapid succession.
Our by-election work was such a new thing in English politics that we
attracted an enormous amount of attention wherever we went. It was our
custom to begin work the very hour we entered a town. If, on our way
from the station to the hotel, we encountered a group of men, say, in
the market-place, we either stopped and held a meeting on the spot, or
else we stayed long enough to tell them when and where our meetings were
to be held, and to urge them to attend. The usual first step, after
securing lodgings, was to hire a vacant shop, fill the windows with
suffrage literature, and fling out our purple, green, and white flag.
Meanwhile, some of us were busy hiring the best available hall. If we
got possession of the battle-ground before the men, we sometimes
"cornered" all the good halls and left the candidate nothing but
schoolhouses for his indoor meetings. Truth to tell, our meetings were
so much more popular than theirs that we really needed the larger halls.
Often, a candidate with the Suffragettes for rivals spoke to almost
empty benches. The crowds were away listening to the women.
Naturally, this greatly displeased the politicians, and it scandalised
many of the old-fashioned Liberal partisans. In one place, I think it
was Colne Valley in Yorkshire, an amusing instance of masculine
hostility occurred. We had arrived on a day when both Conservative and
Liberal committees were choosing their candidates, and we thought it a
good opportunity to hold a series of outdoor meetings. We tried to get
a lorry for a rostrum, but the only man in town who had these big vans
to let disapproved of Suffragettes so violently that he wouldn't let us
have one. So we borrowed a chair from a woman shopkeeper, and went at
it. Soon we had a large crowd and an interested audience. We also got
the attention of a number of small boys with pea-shooters, and had to
make our speeches under a blistering fire of dried peas.
While I was speaking the fire ceased, to my relief--for dried peas
sting. I continued my speech with renewed vigor, only to have one of my
best points spoiled by roars of laughter from the crowd. I finished
somehow, and sat down; and then it was explained to me that the
pea-shooters had been financed by one of the prominent Liberals of the
town, another man who disapproved of our policy of opposing the
Government. As soon as the ammunition gave out this man furnished the
boys with a choice supply of rotten oranges. These were not so easily
handled, it appeared, for the very first one went wild, and struck the
chivalrous gentleman violently in the neck. This it was that had caused
the laughter, and stopped the attack on the women.
We met with some pretty rough horse-play, and even with some brutality,
in several by-elections, but on the whole we found the men ready, and
the women more than ready, to listen to us. We tamed and educated a
public that had always been used to violence at elections. We even tamed
the boys, who came to the meetings on purpose to skylark. When we were
in Rutlandshire that spring three schoolboys came to see me and told me,
shyly, that they were interested in suffrage. They had had a debate on
the subject at their school, and although the decision had been for the
other side, all the boys wanted to know more about it. Wouldn't I please
have a meeting especially for them? Of course I consented, and I found
my boy audience quite delightful. Indeed, I hope they liked me half as
well as I did them.
All through the spring our by-election work continued with amazing
success, although our part in the Government losses was rarely admitted
by the politicians. The voters knew, however. At an election in Suffolk,
where we helped to double the Unionist vote, the successful candidate,
speaking to the crowd from his hotel window, said, "What has been the
cause of the great and glorious victory?" Instantly the crowd roared,
"Votes for Women!"--"Three cheers for the Suffragettes!" This was not at
all what the successful candidate had intended, but he waved his hand
graciously and said, "No doubt the ladies had something to do with it."
The newspaper correspondents were not so reluctant to acknowledge our
influence. Even when they condemned our policy, they were unsparing in
their admiration for our energy, and the courage and ardour of our
workers. Said the correspondent of the London _Tribune_, a Liberal paper
hostile to our tactics: "Their staying power, judging them by the
standards of men, is extraordinary. By taking afternoon as well as
evening meetings, they have worked twice as hard as the men. They are
up earlier, they retire just as late. Women against men, they are
better speakers, more logical, better informed, better phrased, with a
surer insight for the telling argument."
After a summer spent in strengthening our forces, organising new
branches, holding meetings--something like three thousand of these
between May and October--invading meetings of Cabinet Ministers--we
managed to do that about once every day--electioneering, and getting up
huge demonstrations in various cities, we arrived at the end of the
year. In the last months of the year, I directed several hotly contested
by-elections, at one of which I met with one of the most serious
misadventures of my life.
This by-election was held in the division of Mid-Devon, a stronghold of
Liberalism. In fact, since its creation in 1885, the seat has never been
held by any except a Liberal member. The constituency is a large one,
divided into eight districts. The population of the towns is a rough and
boisterous one, and its devotion, blind and unreasoning, to the Liberal
party has always reflected the rude spirit of the voters. A Unionist
woman told me, shortly after my arrival, that my life would be unsafe if
I dared openly to oppose the Liberal candidate. She had never dared, she
assured me, to wear her party colours in public. However, I did
speak--in our headquarters at Newton Abbott, the principal town of the
division, at Hull, and at Bovey Tracey. We held meetings twice a day,
calling upon the voters to "beat the Government in Mid-Devon, as a
message that women must have votes next year." Although some of the
meetings were turbulent, we were treated with much more consideration
than either of the candidates, who, not infrequently, were howled down
and put to flight. Often the air of their meetings was thick with
decayed vegetables and dirty snowballs. We had some rather lively
sessions, too. Once, at an outdoor meeting, some young roughs dragged
our lorry round and round until it seemed that we must be upset, and
several times the language hurled at us from the crowd was quite unfit
for me to repeat. Still, we escaped actual violence until the day of the
election, when it was announced that the Unionist candidate had won the
seat by a majority of twelve hundred and eighty. We knew instantly that
the deepest resentment of the Liberals would be aroused, but it did not
occur to us that the resentment would be directed actively against us.
After the declaration at the polls, my companion, Mrs. Martel, and I
started to walk to our lodgings. Some of our friends stopped us, and
drew our attention to the newly elected Unionist member of Parliament,
who was being escorted from the polling place by a strong guard of
police. We were warned that our safety demanded an immediate flight from
the town. I laughingly assured our friends that I was never afraid to
trust myself in a crowd, and we walked on. Suddenly we were confronted
by a crowd of young men and boys, clay-cutters from the pits on the edge
of town. These young men, who wore the red rosettes of the Liberal
party, had just heard of their candidate's defeat, and they were mad