My own story
there was economic. One case of a little cigar maker, who said very
simply that she only went on the streets when out of work, and that when
in work she earned $8 a week, was very tragic and touching. I could not
keep the Night Court out of my speeches after that. The whole dreadful
injustice of women's lives seemed mirrored in that place.
I went as far west as the Pacific Coast on this visit, spending
Christmas day in Seattle, and for the first time seeing a community
where women and men existed on terms of exact equality. It was a
delightful experience. As I wrote home to our members, the men of the
western States seemed to my eyes eager, earnest, rough men, building a
great community in a great hurry, but never have I seen greater respect,
courtesy and chivalry shown to women than in that one Suffrage State it
has been my privilege to visit.
I am getting a little ahead of my story, however. It was in November,
when I was in the city of Minneapolis, that a crushing blow descended on
the English suffragists. I learned of this through cabled despatches in
the newspapers and from private cables, and was so staggered that I
could scarcely command myself sufficiently to fill my immediate
engagements. This was the news, that the Government had broken their
plighted word and had deliberately destroyed the Conciliation Bill. My
first wild thought, on hearing of this act of treachery, was to cancel
all engagements and return to England, but my final decision to remain
afterwards proved the right one, because the women at home, without a
moment's loss of time, struck the answering blow, guided by that
insight which has been characteristic of every act of the members of our
Union. I did not return to England until January 11, 1912, and by that
time great deeds had been done. Our movement had entered upon a new and
more vigorous stage of militancy.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Lady Constance Lytton's story has been thrillingly told in her book
"Prisons and Prisoners," Heinemann.
BOOK III
THE WOMEN'S REVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
Parliament had reassembled on October 25th, 1911, and the first move on
the part of the Government was, to say the least of it, rather
unpropitious. The Prime Minister submitted two motions, the first one
empowering them to take all the time of the House during the remainder
of the session, and the second guillotining discussion on the Insurance
Bill so as to force the measure through before Christmas. One day only
was allotted to the clauses relating to women in that bill. These
clauses were notoriously unfair; they provided for sickness insurance of
about four million women and unemployment insurance of no women at all.
Under the provision of the bill eleven million men were ensured against
sickness and about two and a half million against unemployment. Women
were given lower benefits for the same premium as men, and premiums paid
out of the family income were credited solely to the men's account. The
bill as drafted provided no form of insurance for wives, mothers and
daughters who spent their lives at home working for the family. It
penalised women for staying in the home, which most men agree is women's
only legitimate sphere of action. The amended bill grudgingly allowed
aside from maternity benefits, a small insurance, on rather difficult
terms, for workingmen's wives.
Thus the re-elected Government's first utterance to women was one of
contempt; and this was followed, on November 7th, by the almost
incredible announcement that the Government intended, at the next
session, to introduce a manhood suffrage bill. This announcement was not
made in the House of Commons, but to a deputation of men from the
People's Suffrage Federation, a small group of people who advocated
universal adult suffrage. The deputation, which was very privately
arranged for, was received by Mr. Asquith, and the then Master of
Elibank (Chief Liberal Whip). The spokesman asked Mr. Asquith to bring
in a Government measure for universal adult suffrage, including adult
women. The Prime Minister replied that the Government had pledged
facilities for the Conciliation Bill, which was as far as they were
prepared to go in the matter of women's suffrage. But, he added, the
Government intended in the next session to introduce and to pass through
all its stages a genuine reform bill which would sweep away existing
qualifications for the franchise, and substitute a single qualification
of residence. The bill would apply to adult males only, but it would be
so framed as to be open to a woman suffrage amendment in case the House
of Commons desired to make that extension and amendment.
This portentous announcement came like a bolt from the blue, and there
was strong condemnation of the Government's treachery to women. Said the
_Saturday Review_:
With absolutely no demand, no ghost of a demand, for more votes
for men, and with--beyond all cavil--a very strong demand for votes
for women, the Government announce their Manhood Suffrage Bill and
carefully evade the other question! For a naked, avowed plan of
gerrymandering no Government surely ever did beat this one.
The _Daily Mail_ said that the "policy which Mr. Asquith proposes is
absolutely indefensible." And the _Evening Standard and Globe_ said: "We
are no friends of female suffrage, but anything more contemptible than
the attitude assumed by the Government it is difficult to imagine."
If the Government hoped to deceive any one by their dishonest reference
to the possibility of a woman suffrage amendment, they were
disappointed. Said the _Evening News_:
Mr. Asquith's bombshell will blow the Conciliation Bill to
smithereens, for it is impossible to have a manhood suffrage for
men and a property qualification for women. True, the Premier
consents to leave the question of women's suffrage to the House,
but he knows well enough what the decision of the House will be.
The Conciliation Bill had a chance, but the larger measure has none
at all.
I have quoted these newspaper leaders to show you that our opinion of
the Government's action was shared even by the press. Universal suffrage
in a country where women are in a majority of one million is not likely
to happen in the lifetime of any reader of this volume, and the
Government's generous offer of a possible amendment was nothing more
than a gratuitous insult to the suffragists.
The truce, naturally, came to an abrupt end. The W. S. P. U. wrote to
the Prime Minister, saying that consternation had been aroused by the
Government's announcement, and that it had been decided accordingly to
send a deputation representing the Women's Social and Political Union to
wait upon himself and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the evening of
November 21st. The purpose of the deputation was to demand that the
proposed manhood suffrage bill be abandoned, and that in its place
should be introduced a Government measure giving equal franchise rights
to men and women. A similar letter was despatched to Mr. Lloyd-George.
Six times before on occasions of crisis had the W. S. P. U. requested an
interview with Mr. Asquith, and each time they had been refused. This
time the Prime Minister replied that he had decided to receive a
deputation of the various suffrage societies on November 17th,
"including your own society, if you desire it." It was proposed that
each society appoint four representatives as members of the deputation
which would be received by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
Nine suffrage societies sent representatives to the meeting, our own
representatives being Christabel Pankhurst, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Miss
Annie Kenney, Lady Constance Lytton and Miss Elizabeth Robins.
Christabel and Mrs. Lawrence spoke for the Union, and they did not
hesitate to accuse the two Ministers to their faces of having grossly
tricked and falsely misled women. Mr. Asquith, in his reply to the
deputation, resented these imputations.
He had kept his pledge, he insisted, in regard to the Conciliation
Bill. He was perfectly willing to give facilities to the Bill, if the
women preferred that to an amendment to his reform bill. Moreover, he
denied that he had made any new announcement. As far back as 1908 he had
distinctly declared that the Government regarded it as a sacred duty to
bring forward a manhood suffrage bill before that Parliament came to an
end. It was true that the Government did not carry out that binding
obligation, and it was also true that until the present time nothing
more was ever said about a manhood suffrage bill, but that was not the
Government's fault. The crisis of the Lord's veto, had momentarily
displaced the bill. Now he merely proposed to fulfil his promise made in
1908, and also his promise about giving facilities to the Conciliation
Bill. He was ready to keep both promises. Well he knew that those
promises were incompatible, that the fulfilment of both was therefore
impossible, and Christabel told him so bluntly and fearlessly. "We are
not satisfied," she warned him, and the Prime Minister said acidly: "I
did not expect to satisfy _you_."
The reply of the W. S. P. U. was immediate and forceful. Led by Mrs.
Pethick Lawrence, our women went out with stones and hammers and broke
hundreds of windows in the Home Office, the War and Foreign Offices, the
Board of Education, the Privy Council Office, the Board of Trade, the
Treasury, Somerset House, the National Liberal Club, several post
offices, the Old Banqueting Hall, the London and South Western Bank, and
a dozen other buildings, including the residence of Lord Haldane and
Mr. John Burns. Two hundred and twenty women were arrested and about 150
of them sent to prison for terms varying from a week to two months.
One individual protest deserves mention because of its prophetic
character. In December Miss Emily Wilding Davison was arrested for
attempting to set fire to a letter box at Parliament Street Post Office.
In court Miss Davison said that she did it as a protest against the
Government's treachery, and as a demand that women's suffrage be
included in the King's speech. "The protest was meant to be serious,"
she said, "and so I adopted a serious course. In past agitation for
reform the next step after window-breaking was incendiarism, in order to
draw the attention of the private citizens to the fact that this
question of reform was their concern as well as that of women."
Miss Davison received the severe sentence of six months' imprisonment
for her deed.
To this state of affairs I returned from my American tour. I had the
comfort of reflecting that my imprisoned comrades were being accorded
better treatment than the early prisoners had known. Since early in 1910
some concessions had been granted, and some acknowledgment of the
political character of our offences had been made. During the brief
period when these scant concessions to justice were allowed, the hunger
strike was abandoned and prison was robbed of its worst horror, forcible
feeding. The situation was bad enough, however, and I could see that it
might easily become a great deal worse. We had reached a stage at which
the mere sympathy of members of Parliament, however sincerely felt, was
no longer of the slightest use. Reminding our members this, in the first
speeches made after returning to England I asked them to prepare
themselves for more action. If women's suffrage was not included in the
next King's speech we should have to make it absolutely impossible for
the Government to touch the question of the franchise.
The King's speech, when Parliament met in February, 1912, alluded to the
franchise question in very general terms. Proposals, it was stated,