My own story
about human equality, used by the gentlemen who were then coming into
power. They meant to ignore the women--there was no doubt whatever about
that. For in the official documents coming from the Liberal party on the
eve of the 1905 election, there were sentences like this: 'What the
country wants is a simple measure of Manhood Suffrage.' There was no
room for the inclusion of women. We knew perfectly well that if there
was to be franchise reform at all, the Liberal party which was then
coming into power did not mean Votes for Women, in spite of all the
pledges of members; in spite of the fact that a majority of the House
of Commons, especially on the Liberal side, were pledged to it--it did
not mean that they were going to put it into practice. And so we found
some way of forcing their attention to this question.
"Now I come to the facts with regard to militancy. We realised that the
plans we had in our minds would involve great sacrifice on our part,
that it might cost us all we had. We were at that time a little
organisation, composed in the main of working women, the wives and
daughters of working men. And my daughters and I took a leading part,
naturally, because we thought the thing out, and, to a certain extent,
because we were of better social position than most of our members, and
we felt a sense of responsibility."
I described the events that marked the first days of our work, the scene
in Free Trade Hall, Manchester, when my daughter and her companion were
arrested for the crime of asking a question of a politician, and I
continued:
"What did they do next? (I want you to realise that no step we have
taken forward has been taken until after some act of repression on the
part of our enemy, the Government--because it is the Government that is
our enemy; it is not the Members of Parliament, it is not the men in the
country; it is the Government in power alone that can give us the vote.
It is the Government alone that we regard as our enemy, and the whole of
our agitation is directed to bringing just as much pressure as necessary
upon those people who can deal with our grievance.) The next step the
women took was to ask questions during the course of meetings, because,
as I told you, these gentlemen gave them no opportunity of asking them
afterwards. And then began the interjections of which we have heard, the
interference with the right to hold public meetings, the interference
with the right of free speech, of which we have heard, for which these
women, these hooligan women, as they have been called--have been
denounced. I ask you, gentlemen, to imagine the amount of courage which
it needs for a woman to undertake that kind of work. When men come to
interrupt women's meetings, they come in gangs, with noisy instruments,
and sing and shout together, and stamp their feet. But when women have
gone to Cabinet Ministers' meetings--only to interrupt Cabinet Ministers
and nobody else--they have gone singly. And it has become increasingly
difficult for them to get in, because as a result of the women's methods
there has developed the system of admission by ticket and the exclusion
of women--a thing which in my Liberal days would have been thought a
very disgraceful thing at Liberal meetings. But this ticket system
developed, and so the women could only get in with very great
difficulty. Women have concealed themselves for thirty-six hours in
dangerous positions, under the platforms, in the organs, wherever they
could get a vantage point. They waited starving in the cold, sometimes
on the roof exposed to a winter's night, just to get a chance of saying
in the course of a Cabinet Minister's speech, 'When is the Liberal
Government going to put its promises into practice?' That has been the
form militancy took in its further development."
I went over the whole matter of our peaceful deputations, and of the
violence with which they were invariably met; of our arrests and the
farcical police court trials, where the mere evidence of policemen's
unsupported statements sent us to prison for long terms; of the
falsehoods told of us in the House of Commons by responsible members of
the Government--tales of women scratching and biting policemen and using
hatpins--and I accused the Government of making these attacks against
women who were powerless to defend themselves because they feared the
women and desired to crush the agitation represented by our
organisation.
"Now it has been stated in this Court," I said, "that it is not the
Women's Social and Political Union that is in the Court, but that it is
certain defendants. The action of the Government, gentlemen, is
certainly against the defendants who are before you here to-day, but it
is also against the Women's Social and Political Union. The intention is
to crush that organisation. And this intention apparently was arrived at
after I had been sent to prison for two months for breaking a pane of
glass worth, I am told, 2s. 3d., the punishment which I accepted because
I was a leader of this movement, though it was an extraordinary
punishment to inflict for so small an act of damages as I had committed.
I accepted it as the punishment for a leader of an agitation
disagreeable to the Government; and while I was there this prosecution
started. They thought they would make a clean sweep of the people who
they considered were the political brains of the movement. We have got
many false friends in the Cabinet--people who by their words appear to
be well-meaning towards the cause of Women's Suffrage. And they thought
that if they could get the leaders of the Union out of the way, it would
result in the indefinite postponement and settlement of the question in
this country. Well, they have not succeeded in their design, and even if
they had got all the so-called leaders of this movement out of their way
they would not have succeeded even then. Now why have they not put the
Union in the dock? We have a democratic Government, so-called. This
Women's Social and Political Union is not a collection of hysterical and
unimportant wild women, as has been suggested to you, but it is an
important organisation, which numbers amongst its membership very
important people. It is composed of women of all classes of the
community, women who have influence in their particular organisations as
working women; women who have influence in professional organisations as
professional women; women of social importance; women even of Royal rank
are amongst the members of this organisation, and so it would not pay a
democratic Government to deal with this organisation as a whole.
"They hoped that by taking away the people that they thought guided the
political fortunes of the organisation they would break the organisation
down. They thought that if they put out of the way the influential
members of the organisation they, as one member of the Cabinet, I
believe, said, would crush the movement and get it 'on the run.' Well,
Governments have many times been mistaken, gentlemen, and I venture to
suggest to you that Governments are mistaken again. I think the answer
to the Government was given at the Albert Hall meeting held immediately
after our arrest. Within a few minutes, without the eloquence of Mrs.
Pethick Lawrence, without the appeals of the people who have been called
the leaders of this movement, in a very few minutes L10,000 was
subscribed for the carrying on of this movement.
"Now a movement like that, supported like that, is not a wild,
hysterical movement. It is not a movement of misguided people. It is a
very serious movement. Women, I submit, like our members, and women, I
venture to say, like the two women, and like the man who are in the dock
to-day, are not people to undertake a thing like this lightly. May I
just try to make you feel what it is that has made this movement the
gigantic size it is from the very small beginnings it had? It is one of
the biggest movements of modern times. A movement which is not only an
influence, perhaps not yet recognised, in this country, but is
influencing the women's movement all over the world. Is there anything
more marvellous in modern times than the kind of spontaneous outburst in
every country of this woman's movement? Even in China--and I think it
somewhat of a disgrace to Englishmen--even in China women have won the
vote, as an outcome of a successful revolution, with which, I dare say,
members of his Majesty's Government sympathise--a bloody revolution.
"One more word on that point. When I was in prison the second time, for
three months as a common criminal for no greater offence than the issue
of a handbill--less inflammatory in its terms than some of the speeches
of members of the Government who prosecute us here--during that time,
through the efforts of a member of Parliament, there was secured for me
permission to have the daily paper in prison, and the first thing I read
in the daily Press was this: that the Government was at that moment
feting the members of the Young Turkish Revolutionary Party, gentlemen
who had invaded the privacy of the Sultan's home--we used to hear a
great deal about invading the privacy of Mr. Asquith's residence when we
ventured to ring his door bell--gentlemen who had killed and slain, and
had been successful in their revolution, while we women had never thrown
a stone--for none of us was imprisoned for stone throwing, but merely
for taking the part we had then taken in this organisation. There we
were imprisoned while these political murderers were being feted by the
very Government who imprisoned us, and were being congratulated on the
success of their revolution. Now I ask you, was it to be wondered at
that women said to themselves: 'Perhaps it is that we have not done
enough. Perhaps it is that these gentlemen do not understand womenfolk.
Perhaps they do not realise women's ways, and because we have not done
the things that men have done, they may think we are not in earnest.'
"And then we come down to this last business of all, when we have
responsible statesmen like Mr. Hobhouse saying that there had never been
any sentimental uprising, no expression of feeling like that which led
to the burning down of Nottingham Castle. Can you wonder, then, that we
decided we should have to nerve ourselves to do more, and can you
understand why we cast about to find a way, as women will, that would
not involve loss of human life and the maiming of human beings, because
women care more about human life than men, and I think it is quite
natural that we should, for we know what life costs. We risk our lives
when men are born. Now, I want to say this deliberately as a leader of
this movement. We have tried to hold it back, we have tried to keep it
from going beyond bounds, and I have never felt a prouder woman than I
did one night when a police constable said to me, after one of these
demonstrations, 'Had this been a man's demonstration, there would have
been bloodshed long ago.' Well, my lord, there has not been any
bloodshed except on the part of the women themselves--these so-called
militant women. Violence has been done to us, and I who stand before you
in this dock have lost a dear sister in the course of this agitation.
She died within three days of coming out of prison, a little more than a
year ago. These are things which, wherever we are, we do not say very
much about. We cannot keep cheery, we cannot keep cheerful, we cannot
keep the right kind of spirit, which means success, if we dwell too much
upon the hard part of our agitation. But I do say this, gentlemen, that
whatever in future you may think of us, you will say this about us, that
whatever our enemies may say, we have always put up an honourable
fight, and taken no unfair means of defeating our opponents, although