My own story
torture. Only those who have suffered the pain and agony, not to speak
of the moral humiliation of forcible feeding can realise the depths of
the iniquity which the Bishop of London was manoeuvred by the
Government to whitewash. It may be true, as the Bishop comforted himself
by saying, that the victims of forcible feeding suffered the more
because they struggled under the process. But, as Mary Richardson wrote
in the _Suffragette_, to expect a victim not to struggle was the same as
telling her that she would suffer less if she did not jump on getting a
cinder in her eye. "The principle," declared Miss Richardson, "is the
same. One struggles because the pain is excruciating, and the nerves of
the eyes, ears and face are so tortured that it would be impossible not
to resist to the uttermost. One struggles, also, because of another
reason--a moral reason--for forcible feeding is an immoral assault as
well as a painful physical one, and to remain passive under it would
give one the feeling of sin; the sin of concurrence. One's whole nature
is revolted; resistance is therefore inevitable."
I think it proper here to explain also the policy upon which we embarked
in 1914 of taking our cause directly to the King. The reader has perhaps
heard of Suffragette "insults" to King George and Queen Mary, and it is
but just that he should hear a direct account of how these "insults" are
offered. Several isolated attempts had been made to present petitions to
the King, once when he was on his way to Westminster to open Parliament,
and again on an occasion when he paid a visit to Bristol. On the latter
occasion the woman who tried to present the petition was assaulted by
one of the King's equerries, who struck her with the flat of his sword.
We finally resolved on the policy of direct petition to the king because
we had been forced to abandon all hope of successful petitioning to his
Ministers. Tricked and betrayed at every turn by the Liberal Government,
we announced that we would not again put even a pretence of confidence
in them. We would carry our demand for justice to the throne of the
Monarch. Late in December, 1913, while I was in prison for the second
time since my return to England, a great gala performance was given at
Covent Garden, the opera being the Jeanne d'Arc of Raymond Roze. The
King and Queen and the entire Court were present, and the scene was
expected to be one of unusual brilliance. Our women took advantage of
the occasion to make one of the most successful demonstrations of the
year. A box was secured directly opposite the Royal Box, and this was
occupied by three women, beautifully gowned. On entering they had
managed, without attracting the slightest attention, to lock and
barricade the door, and at the close of the first act, as soon as the
orchestra had disappeared, the women stood up, and one of them, with the
aid of a megaphone, addressed the King. Calling attention to the
impressive scenes on the stage, the speaker told the King that women
were to-day fighting, as Joan of Arc fought centuries ago, for human
liberty, and that they, like the maid of Orleans, were being tortured
and done to death, in the name of the King, in the name of the Church,
and with the full knowledge and responsibility of established
Government. At this very hour the leader of these fighters in the army
of liberty was being held in prison and tortured by the King's
authority.
The vast audience was thrown into a panic of excitement and horror, and
amid a perfect turmoil of cries and adjurations, the door of the box was
finally broken down and the women ejected. As soon as they had left the
house others of our women, to the number of forty or more, who had been
sitting quietly in an upper gallery, rose to their feet and rained
suffrage literature on the heads of the audience below. It was fully
three quarters of an hour before the excitement subsided and the singers
could go on with the opera.
The sensation caused by this direct address to Royalty inspired us to
make a second attempt to arouse the King's conscience, and early in
January, as soon as Parliament re-assembled, we announced that I would
personally lead a deputation to Buckingham Palace. The plan was welcomed
with enthusiasm by our members and a very large number of women
volunteered to join the deputation, which was intended to make a protest
against three things--the continued disfranchisement of women; the
forcible feeding and the cat and mouse torture of those who were
fighting against this injustice; and the scandalous manner in which the
Government, while coercing and torturing militant women, were allowing
perfect freedom to the men opponents of Home Rule in Ireland, men who
openly announced that they were about to carry out a policy, not merely
of attacking property, but of destroying human life.
I wrote a letter to the King, conveying to him "the respectful and loyal
request of the Women's Social and Political Union that Your Majesty will
give audience to a deputation of women." The letter went on: "The
deputation desire to submit to Your Majesty in person their claim to the
Parliamentary vote, which is the only protection against the grievous
industrial and social wrongs that women suffer; is the symbol and
guarantee of British citizenship; and means the recognition of women's
equal dignity and worth, as members of our great Empire.
"The Deputation will further lay before Your Majesty a complaint of the
mediaeval and barbarous methods of torture whereby Your Majesty's
Ministers are seeking to repress women's revolt against the deprivation
of citizen rights--a revolt as noble and glorious in its spirit and
purpose as any of those past struggles for liberty which are the pride
of the British race.
"We have been told by the unthinking--by those who are heedless of the
constitutional principles upon which is based our loyal request for an
audience of Your Majesty in person--that our conversation should be with
Your Majesty's Ministers.
"We repudiate this suggestion. In the first place, it would not only be
repugnant to our womanly sense of dignity, but it would be absurd and
futile for us to interview the very men against whom we bring the
accusations of betraying the Women's Cause and torturing those who fight
for that Cause.
"In the second place, we will not be referred to, and we will not
recognise the authority of men who, in our eyes, have no legal or
constitutional standing in the matter, because we have not been
consulted as to their election to Parliament nor as to their appointment
as Ministers of the Crown."
I then cited as a precedent in support of our claim to be heard by the
King in person, the case of the Deputation of Irish Catholics, which, in
the year 1793, was received by King George III in person.
I further said:
"Our right as women to be heard and to be aided by Your Majesty is far
stronger than any such right possessed by men, because it is based upon
our lack of every other constitutional means of securing the redress of
our grievances. We have no power to vote for Members of Parliament, and
therefore for us there is no House of Commons. We have no voice in the
House of Lords. But we have a King, and to him we make our appeal.
"Constitutionally speaking, we are, as voteless women, living in the
time when the power of the Monarch was unlimited. In that old time,
which is passed for men though not for women, men who were oppressed had
recourse to the King--the source of power, of justice, and of reform.
"Precisely in the same way we now claim the right to come to the foot of
the Throne and to make of the King in person our demand for the redress
of the political grievance which we cannot, and will not, any longer
tolerate.
"Because women are voteless, there are in our midst to-day sweated
workers, white slaves, outraged children, and innocent mothers and their
babes stricken by horrible disease. It is for the sake and in the cause
of these unhappy members of our sex, that we ask of Your Majesty the
audience that we are confident will be granted to us."
It was some days before we had the answer to this letter, and in the
meantime some uncommonly stirring and painful occurrences attracted the
public attention.
CHAPTER VIII
For months before my return to England from my American lecture tour,
the Ulster situation had been increasingly serious. Sir Edward Carson
and his followers had declared that if Home Rule government should be
created and set up in Dublin, they would--law or no law--establish a
rival and independent Government in Ulster. It was known that arms and
ammunition were being shipped to Ireland, and that men--and women too,
for that matter--were drilling and otherwise getting ready for civil
war. The W. S. P. U. approached Sir Edward Carson and asked him if the
proposed Ulster Government would give equal voting rights to women. We
frankly declared that in case the Ulster men alone were to have the
vote, that we should deal with "King Carson" and his colleagues exactly
in the same manner that we had adopted towards the British Government
centred at Westminster. Sir Edward Carson at first promised us that the
rebel Ulster Government, should it come into existence, would give votes
to Ulster women. This pledge was later repudiated, and in the early
winter months of 1914 militancy appeared in Ulster. It had been raging
in Scotland for some time, and now the imprisoned Suffragettes in that
country were being forcibly fed as in England. The answer to this was,
of course, more militancy. The ancient Scottish church of Whitekirk, a
relic of pre-Reformation days, was destroyed by fire. Several unoccupied
country houses were also burned.
It was about this time, February, 1914, that I undertook a series of
meetings outside London, the first of which was to be held in Glasgow,
in the St. Andrews Hall, which holds many thousands of people. In order
that I might be free on the night of the meeting, I left London unknown
to the police, in a motor car. In spite of all efforts to apprehend me I
succeeded in reaching Glasgow and in getting to the platform of St.
Andrews' where I found myself face to face with an enormous, and
manifestly sympathetic audience.
As it was suspected that the police might rush the platform, plans had
been made to offer resistance, and the bodyguard was present in force.
My speech was one of the shortest I have ever made. I said:
"I have kept my promise, and in spite of His Majesty's Government I am
here to-night. Very few people in this audience, very few people in this
country, know how much of the nation's money is being spent to silence
women. But the wit and ingenuity of women is overcoming the power and
money of the British Government. It is well that we should have this
meeting to-night, because to-day is a memorable day in the annals of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. To-day in the House of
Commons has been witnessed the triumph of militancy--men's
militancy--and to-night I hope to make it clear to the people in this
meeting that if there is any distinction to be drawn at all between
militancy in Ulster and the militancy of women, it is all to the
advantage of the women. Our greatest task in this women's movement is to
prove that we are human beings like men, and every stage of our fight is
forcing home that very difficult lesson into the minds of men, and
especially into the minds of politicians. I propose to-night at this
political meeting to have a text. Texts are usually given from pulpits,
but perhaps you will forgive me if I have a text to-night. My text is:
'Equal justice for men and women, equal political justice, equal legal
justice, equal industrial justice, and equal social justice.' I want as