My own story
The situation in Parliament, as far as the suffrage question was
concerned, was clean swept and barren. The third Conciliation Bill had
failed to pass its second reading, the majority against it being
fourteen.
Many Liberal members were afraid to vote for the bill because Mr.
Lloyd-George and Mr. Lewis Harcourt had persistently spread the rumour
that its passage, at that time, would result in splitting the Cabinet.
The Irish Nationalist members had become hostile to the bill because
their leader, Mr. Redmond, was an anti-suffragist, and had refused to
include a woman suffrage clause in the Home Rule Bill. Our erstwhile
friends, the Labour members, were so apathetic, or so fearful for
certain of their own measures, that most of them stayed away from the
House on the day the bill reached its second reading. So it was lost,
and the Militants were blamed for its loss! In June the Government
announced that Mr. Asquith's manhood suffrage bill would soon be
introduced, and very soon after this the bill did appear. It simplified
the registration machinery, reduced the qualifying period of residence
to six months, and abolished property qualifications, plural voting and
University representation. In a word, it gave the Parliamentary
franchise to every man above the age of twenty-one and it denied it to
all women. Never in the history of the suffrage movement had such an
affront been offered to women, and never in the history of England had
such a blow been aimed at women's liberties. It is true that the Prime
Minister had pledged himself to introduce a bill capable of being
amended to include women's suffrage, and to permit any amendment that
passed its second reading to become a part of the bill. But we had no
faith in an amendment, nor in any bill that was not from its inception
an official Government measure. Mr. Asquith had broken every pledge he
had ever made the women, and this new pledge impressed us not at all.
Well we knew that he had given it only to cover his treachery in
torpedoing the Conciliation Bill, and in the hope of placating the
suffragists, perhaps securing another truce to militancy.
If this last was his hope he was most grievously disappointed. Signs
were constantly appearing to indicate that women would no longer be
contented with the symbolic militancy involved in window breaking. For
example, traces were found in the Home Secretary's office at Whitehall
of an attempt at arson. On the doorstep of another Cabinet Minister
similar traces were found. Had the Government acted upon these warnings,
by giving women the vote, all the serious acts of militancy that have
occurred since would have been averted. But like the heart of Pharaoh,
the heart of the Government hardened, and militant acts followed one
another in rapid succession. In July the W. S. P. U. issued a manifesto
which set forth our intentions in that regard. The manifesto read in
part as follows:
"The leaders of the Women's Social and Political Union have so often
warned the Government that unless the vote were granted to women in
response to the mild militancy of the past, a fiercer spirit of revolt
would be awakened which it would be impossible to control. The
Government have blindly disregarded the warning, and now they are
reaping the harvest of their unstatesmanlike folly."
This was issued immediately after a visit paid by Mr. Asquith to Dublin.
The occasion had been intended to be one of great pomp and circumstance,
a huge popular demonstration in honour of the sponsor of Home Rule, but
the Suffragettes turned it into the most lamentable fiasco imaginable.
From the hour of Mr. Asquith's attempted secret departure from London
until his return he lived and moved in momentary dread of Suffragettes.
Every time he entered or left a railway carriage or a steamer he was
confronted by women. Every time he rose to speak he was interrupted by
women. Every public appearance he made was turned into a riot by women.
As he left Dublin a woman threw a hatchet into his motor car, without,
however, doing him any injury. As a final protest against his reception
by Irishmen, the Theatre Royal was set on fire by two women. The theatre
was practically empty at the time, the performance having been
completed, and the damage done was comparatively small, yet the two
women chiefly concerned, Mrs. Leigh and Miss Evans, were given the
barbarous sentences of five years each in prison. These were the first
women sentenced to penal servitude in the history of our movement. Of
course they did not serve their sentences. On entering Mountjoy Prison
they put in the usual claim for first division treatment, and this being
refused, they immediately adopted the hunger strike. A number of Irish
Suffragettes were in Mountjoy at this time for a protest made against
the exclusion of women from the Home Rule Bill. They were in the first
division, and they were almost on the eve of their release, but such is
the indomitable spirit of militancy that these women entered upon a
sympathetic hunger strike. They were released, but the Government
forbade the release of Mrs. Leigh and Miss Evans, that is, they ordered
the authorities to retain the women as long as they could, by forcible
feeding, be kept alive. After a struggle which, for fierceness and
cruelty, is almost unparalleled in our annals, the two women fought
their way out.
All during that summer militancy surged up and down throughout the
Kingdom. A series of attacks on golf links was instituted, not at all in
a spirit of wanton mischief, but with the direct and very practical
object of reminding the dull and self-satisfied English public that when
the liberties of English women were being stolen from them was no time
to think of sports. The women selected country clubs where prominent
Liberal politicians were wont to take their week-end pleasures, and with
acids they burned great patches of turf, rendering the golf greens
useless for the time being. They burned the words, Votes for Women, in
some cases, and always they left behind them reminders that women were
warring for their freedom. On one occasion when the Court was at
Balmoral Castle in Scotland, the Suffragettes invaded the Royal golf
links, and when Sunday morning dawned all the marking flags were found
to have been replaced by W. S. P. U. flags hearing inscriptions such as
"Votes for Women means peace for Ministers," "Forcible feeding must be
stopped," and the like. The golf links were frequently visited by
Suffragettes in order to question recreant ministers. Two women followed
the Prime Minister to Inverness, where he was playing golf with Mr.
McKenna. Approaching the men one Suffragette exclaimed: "Mr. Asquith,
you must stop forcible feeding--" She got no farther, for Mr. Asquith,
turning pale with rage--perhaps--retreated behind the Home Secretary,
who, quite forgetting his manners, seized the Suffragette, crying out
that he was going to throw her into the pond. "Then we will take you
with us," the two retorted, after which a very lively scuffle ensued,
and the women were not thrown into the pond.
This golf green activity really aroused more hostility against us than
all the window-breaking. The papers published appeals to us not to
interfere with a game that helped weary politicians to think clearly,
but our reply to this was that it had not had any such effect on the
Prime Minister or Mr. Lloyd-George. We had undertaken to spoil their
sport and that of a large class of comfortable men in order that they
should be obliged to think clearly about women, and women's firm
determination to get justice.
I made my return to active work in the autumn by speaking at a great
meeting of the W. S. P. U., held in the Albert Hall. At that meeting I
had the announcement to make that the six years' association of Mr. and
Mrs. Pethick Lawrence with the W. S. P. U. had ended.
Since personal dissensions have never been dwelt upon in the
W. S. P. U., have never been allowed to halt the movement or to
interfere for an hour with its progress, I shall not here say any more
about this important dissension than I said at our first large meeting
in Albert Hall after the holiday, on October 17th. That day a new paper
was sold on the streets. It was called _The Suffragette_, it was edited
by Christabel Pankhurst, and was henceforth to be the official organ of
the Union. Both in this new paper and in _Votes for Women_, the
following announcement appeared:
GRAVE STATEMENT BY THE LEADERS
At the first reunion of the leaders after the enforced holiday,
Mrs. Pankhurst and Miss Christabel Pankhurst outlined a new
militant policy which Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence found
themselves altogether unable to approve.
Mrs. Pankhurst and Miss Christabel Pankhurst indicated that they
were not prepared to modify their intentions, and recommended that
Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence should resume control of the Paper,
_Votes for Women_, and should leave the Women's Social and
Political Union.
Rather than make schism in the ranks of the Union Mr. and Mrs.
Pethick Lawrence consented to take this course.
This was signed by all four. That night at the meeting I further
explained to the members that, hard as partings from old friends and
comrades unquestionably were, we must remember that we were fighting in
an army, and that unity of purpose and unity of policy are absolutely
necessary, because without them the army is hopelessly weakened. "It is
better," I said, "that those who cannot agree, cannot see eye to eye as
to policy, should set themselves free, should part, and should be free
to continue their policy as they see it in their own way, unfettered by
those with whom they can no longer agree."
Continuing I said: "I give place to none in appreciation and gratitude
to Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence for the incalculable services that they
have rendered the militant movement for Woman Suffrage, and I firmly
believe that the women's movement will be strengthened by their being
free to work for woman suffrage in the future as they think best, while
we of the Women's Social and Political Union shall continue the militant
agitation for Woman Suffrage initiated by my daughter and myself and a
handful of women more than six years ago."
I then went on to survey the situation in which the W. S. P. U. now
stood and to outline the new militant policy which he had decided upon.
This policy, to begin with, was relentless opposition, not only to the
party in power, the Liberal Party, but to all parties in the coalition.
I reminded the women that the Government that had tricked and betrayed
us and was now plotting to make our progress towards citizenship doubly
difficult, was kept in office through the coalition of three parties.
There was the Liberal Party, nominally the governing party, but they
could not live another day without the coalition of the Nationalist and
the Labour parties. So we should say, not only to the Liberal Party but
to the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party, "So long as you keep in
office an anti-suffrage Government, you are parties to their guilt, and
from henceforth we offer you the same opposition which we give to the
people whom you are keeping in power with your support." I said further:
"We have summoned the Labour Party to do their duty by their own
programme, and to go into opposition to the Government on every question
until the Government do justice to women. They apparently are not
willing to do that. Some of them tell us that other things are more
important than the liberty of women--than the liberty of working women.