My own story
orderly. Then Christabel suddenly asked, "There were no words used so
likely to incite to violence as the advice you gave at Swansea, that the
women should be ruthlessly flung out of your meeting?" Mr. Lloyd-George
looked black, and answered nothing. The magistrate hastened to the
protection of Mr. Lloyd-George. "This is quite irrelevant," he said.
"That was a private meeting." It was a public meeting, and Christabel
said so. "It was a private meeting _in a sense_," insisted the
magistrate.
Mr. Lloyd-George assumed an air of pompous indignation when Christabel
asked him, "Have we not received encouragement from you, and if not from
you from your colleagues, to take action of this kind?" Mr. Lloyd-George
rolled his eyes upward as he replied, "I should be very much surprised
to hear that, Miss Pankhurst."
"Is it not a fact," asked Christabel, "that you yourself have set us an
example of revolt?" "I never incited a crowd to violence," exclaimed
the witness. "Not in the Welsh graveyard case?" she asked. "No!" he
cried angrily. "You did not tell them to break down a wall and disinter
a body?" pursued Christabel. He could not deny this but, "I gave advice
which was found by the Court of Appeal to be sound legal advice," he
snapped, and turned his back as far as he could in the narrow
witness-box.
Mr. Herbert Gladstone had asked to be allowed to testify early, as he
was being detained from important public duties. Christabel asked to
question one witness before Mr. Gladstone entered the box. The witness
was Miss Georgiana Brackenbury, who had recently suffered six weeks'
imprisonment for the cause, and had since met and had a talk with Mr.
Horace Smith, the magistrate, who had made to her a most important and
damaging admission of the government's interference in suffragists'
trials. Christabel asked her one question. "Did Mr. Horace Smith tell
you in sentencing you that he was doing what he had been told to do?"
"You must not put that question!" exclaimed the magistrate. But the
witness had already answered "Yes." There was an excited stir in the
courtroom. It had been recorded under oath that a magistrate had
admitted that Suffragettes were being sentenced not by himself,
according to the evidence and according to law, but by the Government,
for no one could possibly doubt where Mr. Horace Smith's orders came
from.
Mr. Gladstone, plump, bald, and ruddy, in no way resembles his
illustrious father. He entered the witness-box smiling and confident,
but his complacence vanished when Christabel asked him outright if the
Government had not ordered the Commissioner of Police to take this
action against us. Of course the magistrate intervened, and Mr.
Gladstone did not answer the question. Christabel tried again. "Did you
instruct Mr. Horace Smith to decide against Miss Brackenbury, and to
send her to prison for six weeks?" That too was objected to, as were all
questions on the subject.
All through the examination the magistrate constantly intervened to save
the Cabinet Minister from embarrassment, but Christabel finally
succeeded in making Mr. Gladstone admit, point by point, that he had
said that women could never get the vote because they could not fight
for it as men had fought.
A large number of witnesses testified to the orderly nature of the
demonstration on the 13th, and then Christabel rose to plead. She began
by declaring that these proceedings had been taken, as the legal saying
is, "in malice and vexation," in order to lame a political enemy. She
declared that, under the law, the charge which might properly be brought
against us was that of illegal assembly, but the Government had not
charged us with this offence, because the Government desired to keep the
case in a police court.
"The authorities dare not see this case come before a jury," she
declared, "because they know perfectly well that if it were heard before
a jury of our countrymen we should be acquitted, just as John Burns was
acquitted years ago for taking action far more dangerous to the public
peace than we have taken. We are deprived of trial by jury. We are also
deprived of the right to appeal against the magistrate's decision. Very
carefully has this procedure been thought out."
Of the handbill she said: "We do not deny that we issued this bill; none
of us three has wished to deny responsibility. We did issue the bill; we
did cause it to be circulated; we did put upon it the words 'Come and
help the suffragettes rush the House of Commons.' For these words we do
not apologise. It is very well known that we took this action in order
to press forward a claim, which, according to the British constitution,
we are well entitled to make."
In all that the Suffragettes had done, in all that they might ever do,
declared my daughter, they would only be following in the footsteps of
men now in Parliament. "Mr. Herbert Gladstone has told us in the speech
I read to him that the victory of argument alone is not enough. As we
cannot hope to win by force of argument alone, it is necessary to
overcome by other means the savage resistance of the Government to our
claim for citizenship. He says, 'Go on, fight as the men did.' And then,
when we show our power and get the people to help us, he takes
proceedings against us in a manner that would have been disgraceful even
in the old days of coercion. Then there is Mr. Lloyd-George, who, if any
man has done so, has set us an example. His whole career has been a
series of revolts. He has said that if we do not get the vote--mark
these words--we should be justified in adopting the methods the men had
to adopt, namely, pulling down the Hyde Park railings." She quoted Lord
Morley as saying of the Indian unrest: "'We are in India in the presence
of a living movement, and a movement for what? For objects which we
ourselves have taught them to think are desirable objects; and unless we
can somehow reconcile order with satisfaction of those ideals and
aspirations, the fault will not be theirs, it will be ours--it will mark
the breakdown of British statesmanship.'--Apply those words to our
case," she continued.
"Remember that we are demanding of Liberal statesmen that which is for
us the greatest boon and the most essential right--and if the present
Government cannot reconcile order with our demand for the vote without
delay, it will mark the breakdown of their statesmanship. Yes, their
statesmanship has broken down already. They are disgraced. It is only in
this court that they have the smallest hope of being supported."
My daughter had spoken with passion and fervour, and her righteous
indignation had moved her to words that caused the magistrate's face to
turn an angry crimson. When I rose to address the Court I began by
assuming an appearance of calmness which I did not altogether feel. I
endorsed all that Christabel had said of the unfairness of our trial and
the malice of the Government; I protested against the trial of political
offenders in a common police court, and I said that we were not women
who would come into the court as ordinary law-breakers. I described Mrs.
Drummond's worthy career as a wife, a mother, and a self-sustaining
business woman. I said, "Before you decide what is to be done with us,
I should like you to hear from me a statement of what has brought me
into the dock this morning." And then I told of my life and experiences,
many of which I have related in these pages of what I had seen and known
as a Poor Law Guardian and a registrar of births and deaths; of how I
had learned the burning necessity of changing the status of women, of
altering the laws under which they and their children live, and of the
essential justice of making women self-governing citizens.
"I have seen," I said, "that men are encouraged by law to take advantage
of the helplessness of women. Many women have thought as I have, and for
many, many years have tried, by that influence of which we have been so
often reminded, to alter these laws, but we find that influence counts
for nothing. When we went to the House of Commons we used to be told,
when we were persistent, that members of Parliament were not responsible
to women, they were responsible only to voters, and that their time was
too fully occupied to reform those laws, although they agreed that they
needed reforming.
"We women have presented larger petitions in support of our
enfranchisement than were ever presented for any other reform; we have
succeeded in holding greater public meetings than men have ever held for
any reform, in spite of the difficulty which women have in throwing off
their natural diffidence, that desire to escape publicity which we have
inherited from generations of our foremothers. We have broken through
that. We have faced hostile mobs at street corners, because we were told
that we could not have that representation for our taxes that men have
won unless we converted the whole of the country to our side. Because we
have done this, we have been misrepresented, we have been ridiculed, we
have had contempt poured upon us, and the ignorant mob have been incited
to offer us violence, which we have faced unarmed and unprotected by the
safeguards which Cabinet Ministers enjoy. We have been driven to do
this; we are determined to go on with this agitation because we feel in
honour bound. Just as it was the duty of your forefathers, it is our
duty to make the world a better place for women than it is to-day.
"Lastly, I want to call attention to the self-restraint which was shown
by our followers on the night of the 13th, after we had been arrested.
Our rule has always been to be patient, exercise self-restraint, show
our so-called superiors that we are not hysterical; to use no violence,
but rather to offer ourselves to the violence of others.
"That is all I have to say to you, sir. We are here, not because we are
law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers."
The burly policemen, the reporters, and most of the spectators were in
tears as I finished. But the magistrate, who had listened part of the
time with his hand concealing his face, still held that we were properly
charged in a common police court as inciters to riot. Since we refused
to be bound over to keep the peace, he sentenced Mrs. Drummond and
myself to three months' imprisonment, and Christabel to ten weeks'
imprisonment. It was destined to be a kind of imprisonment the
authorities had never yet been called upon to deal with.
CHAPTER IV
My first act on reaching Holloway was to demand that the Governor be
sent for. When he came I told him that the Suffragettes had resolved
that they would no longer submit to being treated as ordinary
law-breakers. In the course of our trial two Cabinet Ministers had
admitted that we were political offenders, and therefore we should
henceforth refuse to be searched or to undress in the presence of the
wardresses. For myself I claimed the right, and I hoped the others would
do likewise, to speak to my friends during exercise, or whenever I came
in contact with them. The Governor, after reflection, yielded to the
first two demands, but said that he would have to consult the Home
Office before permitting us to break the rule of silence. We were
accordingly allowed to change our clothing privately, and, as a further
concession, were placed in adjoining cells. This was little advantage to
me, however, since within a few days I was removed to a hospital cell,
suffering from the illness which prison life always inflicts on me. Here
the Governor visited me with the unwelcome news that the Home Secretary
had refused to allow me the privilege of speech with my fellow