My own story
would be brought forward for the amendment of the law with respect to
the franchise and the registration of electors. This might be construed
to mean that the Government were going to introduce a manhood suffrage
bill or a bill for the abolition of plural voting, which had been
suggested in some quarters as a substitute for the manhood suffrage
bill. No precise statement of the Government's intentions was made, and
the whole franchise question was left in a cloud of uncertainty. Mr. Agg
Gardner, a Unionist member of the Conciliation Committee, drew the third
place in the ballot, and he announced that he should reintroduce the
Conciliation Bill. This interested us very slightly, for knowing its
prospect of success to have been destroyed, for we were done with the
Conciliation Bill forever. Nothing less than a Government measure would
henceforth satisfy the W. S. P. U., because it had been clearly
demonstrated that only a Government measure would be allowed to pass the
House of Commons. With sublime faith, or rather with a deplorable lack
of political insight, the Women's Liberal Federation and the National
Union of Women's Suffrage Societies professed full confidence in the
proposed amendment to a manhood suffrage bill, but we knew how futile
was that hope. We saw that the only course to take was to offer
determined opposition to any measure of suffrage that did not include as
an integral part, equal suffrage for men and women.
On February 16th we held a large meeting of welcome to a number of
released prisoners who had served two and three months for the window
breaking demonstration that had taken place in the previous November. At
this meeting we candidly surveyed the situation and agreed on a course
of action which we believed would be sufficiently strong to prevent the
Government from advancing their threatened franchise bill. I said on
this occasion:
"We don't want to use any weapons that are unnecessarily strong. If the
argument of the stone, that time-honoured official political argument,
is sufficient, then we will never use any stronger argument. And that is
the weapon and the argument that we are going to use next time. And so I
say to every volunteer on our demonstration, 'Be prepared to use that
argument.' I am taking charge of the demonstration, and that is the
argument I am going to use. I am not going to use it for any sentimental
reason, I am going to use it because it is the easiest and the most
readily understood. Why should women go to Parliament Square and be
battered about and insulted, and most important of all, produce less
effect than when we throw stones? We tried it long enough. We submitted
for years patiently to insult and assault. Women had their health
injured. Women lost their lives. We should not have minded if that had
succeeded, but that did not succeed, and we have made more progress with
less hurt to ourselves by breaking glass than ever we made when we
allowed them to break our bodies.
"After all, is not a woman's life, is not her health, are not her limbs
more valuable than panes of glass? There is no doubt of that, but most
important of all, does not the breaking of glass produce more effect
upon the Government? If you are fighting a battle, that should dictate
your choice of weapons. Well, then, we are going to try this time if
mere stones will do it. I do not think it will ever be necessary for us
to arm ourselves as Chinese women have done, but there are women who are
prepared to do that if it should be necessary. In this Union we don't
lose our heads. We only go as far as we are obliged to go in order to
win, and we are going forward with this next protest demonstration in
full faith that this plan of campaign, initiated by our friends whom we
honour to-night, will on this next occasion prove effective."
Ever since militancy took on the form of destruction of property the
public generally, both at home and abroad, has expressed curiosity as to
the logical connection between acts such as breaking windows, firing
pillar boxes, et cetera, and the vote. Only a complete lack of
historical knowledge excuses that curiosity. For every advance of men's
political freedom has been marked with violence and the destruction of
property. Usually the advance has been marked by war, which is called
glorious. Sometimes it has been marked by riotings, which are deemed
less glorious but are at least effective. That speech of mine, just
quoted, will probably strike the reader as one inciting to violence and
illegal action, things as a rule and in ordinary circumstances quite
inexcusable. Well, I will call the reader's attention to what was, in
this connection, a rather singular coincidence. At the very hour when I
was making that speech, advising my audience of the political necessity
of physical revolt, a responsible member of the Government, in another
hall, in another city, was telling his audience precisely the same
thing. This Cabinet Minister, the right Honourable C. E. H. Hobhouse,
addressing a large anti-suffrage meeting in his constituency of Bristol,
said that the suffrage movement was not a political issue because its
adherents had failed to prove that behind this movement existed a large
public demand. He declared that "In the case of the suffrage demand
there has not been the kind of popular sentimental uprising which
accounted for Nottingham Castle in 1832 or the Hyde Park railings in
1867. There has not been a great ebullition of popular feeling."
The "popular sentimental uprising" to which Mr. Hobhouse alluded was the
burning to the ground of the castle of the anti-suffrage Duke of
Newcastle, and of Colwick Castle, the country seat of another of the
leaders of the opposition against the franchise bill. The militant men
of that time did not select uninhabited buildings to be fired. They
burned both these historic residences over their owners' heads. Indeed,
the wife of the owner of Colwick Castle died as a result of shock and
exposure on that occasion. No arrests were made, no men imprisoned. On
the contrary the King sent for the Premier, and begged the Whig
Ministers favourable to the franchise bill not to resign, and intimated
that this was also the wish of the Lords who had thrown out the bill.
Molesworth's History of England says:
These declarations were imperatively called for. The danger was
imminent and the Ministers knew it and did all that lay in their
power to tranquillise the people, and to assure them that the bill
was only delayed and not finally defeated.
For a time the people believed this, but soon they lost patience, and
seeing signs of a renewed activity on the part of the anti-suffragists,
they became aggressive again. Bristol, the very city in which Mr.
Hobhouse made his speech, was set on fire. The militant reformers burned
the new gaol, the toll houses, the Bishop's Palace, both sides of
Queen's Square, including the Mansion House, the custom house, the
excise office, many warehouses, and other private property, the whole
valued at over L100,000--five hundred thousand dollars. It was as a
result of such violence, and in fear of more violence, that the reform
bill was hurried through Parliament and became law in June, 1832.
Our demonstration, so mild by comparison with English men's political
agitation, was announced for March 4th, and the announcement created
much public alarm. Sir William Byles gave notice that he would "ask the
Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention had
been drawn to a speech by Mrs. Pankhurst last Friday night, openly and
emphatically inciting her hearers to violent outrage and the destruction
of property, and threatening the use of firearms if stones did not prove
sufficiently effective; and what steps he proposes to take to protect
Society from this outbreak of lawlessness."
The question was duly asked, and the Home Secretary replied that his
attention had been called to the speech, but that it would not be
desirable in the public interest to say more than this at present.
Whatever preparations the police department were making to prevent the
demonstration, they failed because, while as usual, we were able to
calculate exactly what the police department were going to do, they were
utterly unable to calculate what we were going to do. We had planned a
demonstration for March 4th, and this one we announced. We planned
another demonstration for March 1st, but this one we did not announce.
Late in the afternoon of Friday, March 1st, I drove in a taxicab,
accompanied by the Hon. Secretary of the Union, Mrs. Tuke and another of
our members, to No. 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the
Prime Minister. It was exactly half past five when we alighted from the
cab and threw our stones, four of them, through the window panes. As we
expected we were promptly arrested and taken to Cannon Row police
station. The hour that followed will long be remembered in London. At
intervals of fifteen minutes relays of women who had volunteered for the
demonstration did their work. The first smashing of glass occurred in
the Haymarket and Piccadilly, and greatly startled and alarmed both
pedestrians and police. A large number of the women were arrested, and
everybody thought that this ended the affair. But before the excited
populace and the frustrated shop owners' first exclamation had died
down, before the police had reached the station with their prisoners,
the ominous crashing and splintering of plate glass began again, this
time along both sides of Regent Street and the Strand. A furious rush of
police and people towards the second scene of action ensued. While their
attention was being taken up with occurrences in this quarter, the third
relay of women began breaking the windows in Oxford Circus and Bond
Street. The demonstration ended for the day at half past six with the
breaking of many windows in the Strand. The _Daily Mail_ gave this
graphic account of the demonstration:
From every part of the crowded and brilliantly lighted streets came
the crash of splintered glass. People started as a window shattered
at their side; suddenly there was another crash in front of them;
on the other side of the street; behind--everywhere. Scared shop
assistants came running out to the pavements; traffic stopped;
policemen sprang this way and that; five minutes later the streets
were a procession of excited groups, each surrounding a woman
wrecker being led in custody to the nearest police station.
Meanwhile the shopping quarter of London had plunged itself into a
sudden twilight. Shutters were hurriedly fitted; the rattle of iron
curtains being drawn came from every side. Guards of
commissionaires and shopmen were quickly mounted, and any
unaccompanied lady in sight, especially if she carried a hand bag,
became an object of menacing suspicion.
At the hour when this demonstration was being made a conference was
being held at Scotland Yard to determine what should be done to prevent
the smashing of windows on the coming Monday night. But we had not
announced the hour of our March 4th protest. I had in my speech simply
invited women to assemble in Parliament Square on the evening of March
4th, and they accepted the invitation. Said the _Daily Telegraph_:
By six o'clock the neighbourhood Houses of Parliament were in a
stage of siege. Shop keepers in almost every instance barricaded
their premises, removed goods from the windows and prepared for the
worst. A few minutes before six o'clock a huge force of police,
amounting to nearly three thousand constables, was posted in
Parliament Square, Whitehall, and streets adjoining, and large