My own story
and foolish jokes. The members listened to the insulting performance
with laughter and applause.
When news of what was happening reached the women who waited in the
Strangers' Lobby, a feeling of wild excitement and indignation took
possession of the throng. Seeing their temper, I felt that the moment
had come for a demonstration such as no old-fashioned suffragist had
ever attempted. I called upon the women to follow me outside for a
meeting of protest against the government. We swarmed out into the open,
and Mrs. Wolstenholm-Elmy, one of the oldest suffrage workers in
England, began to speak. Instantly the police rushed into the crowd of
women, pushing them about and ordering them to disperse. We moved on as
far as the great statue of Richard Coeur de Lion that guards the
entrance to the House of Lords, but again the police intervened. Finally
the police agreed to let us hold a meeting in Broad Sanctuary, very near
the gates of Westminster Abbey. Here we made speeches and adopted a
resolution condemning the Government's action in allowing a small
minority to talk out our bill. This was the first militant act of the
W. S. P. U. It caused comment and even some alarm, but the police
contented themselves with taking our names.
The ensuing summer was spent in outdoor work. By this time the Women's
Social and Political Union had acquired some valuable accessions, and
money began to come to us. Among our new members was one who was
destined to play an important role in the unfolding drama of the
militant movement. At the close of one of our meetings at Oldham a young
girl introduced herself to me as Annie Kenney, a mill-worker, and a
strong suffrage sympathiser. She wanted to know more of our society and
its objects, and I invited her and her sister Jenny, a Board School
teacher, to tea the next day. They came and joined our Union, a step
that definitely changed the whole course of Miss Kenney's life, and gave
us one of our most distinguished leaders and organisers. With her help
we began to carry our propaganda to an entirely new public.
In Lancashire there is an institution known as the Wakes, a sort of
travelling fair where they have merry-go-rounds, Aunt-Sallies, and other
festive games, side-shows of various kinds, and booths where all kinds
of things are sold. Every little village has its Wakes-week during the
summer and autumn, and it is the custom for the inhabitants of the
villages to spend the Sunday before the opening of the Wakes walking
among the booths in anticipation of tomorrow's joys. On these occasions
the Salvation Army, temperance orators, venders of quack medicines,
pedlars, and others, take advantage of the ready-made audience to
advance their propaganda. At Annie Kenney's suggestion we went from one
village to the other, following the Wakes and making suffrage speeches.
We soon rivalled in popularity the Salvation Army, and even the
tooth-drawers and patent-medicine pedlars.
The Women's Social and Political Union had been in existence two years
before any opportunity was presented for work on a national scale. The
autumn of 1905 brought a political situation which seemed to us to
promise bright hopes for women's enfranchisement. The life of the old
Parliament, dominated for nearly twenty years by the Conservative Party,
was drawing to an end, and the country was on the eve of a general
election in which the Liberals hoped to be returned to power. Quite
naturally the Liberal candidates went to the country with perfervid
promises of reform in every possible direction. They appealed to the
voters to return them, as advocates and upholders of true democracy, and
they promised that there should be a Government united in favour of
people's rights against the powers of a privileged aristocracy.
Now repeated experiences had taught us that the only way to attain
women's suffrage was to commit a Government to it. In other words,
pledges of support from candidates were plainly useless. They were not
worth having. The only object worth trying for was pledges from
responsible leaders that the new Government would make women's suffrage
a part of the official programme. We determined to address ourselves to
those men who were likely to be in the Liberal Cabinet, demanding to
know whether their reforms were going to include justice to women.
We laid our plans to begin this work at a great meeting to be held in
Free Trade Hall, Manchester, with Sir Edward Grey as the principal
speaker. We intended to get seats in the gallery, directly facing the
platform and we made for the occasion a large banner with the words:
"Will the Liberal Party Give Votes for Women?" We were to let this
banner down over the gallery rails at the moment when our speaker rose
to put the question to Sir Edward Grey. At the last moment, however, we
had to alter the plan because it was impossible to get the gallery seats
we wanted. There was no way in which we could use our large banner, so,
late in the afternoon on the day of the meeting, we cut out and made a
small banner with the three-word inscription: "Votes for Women." Thus,
quite accidentally, there came into existence the present slogan of the
suffrage movement around the world.
Annie Kenney and my daughter Christabel were charged with the mission of
questioning Sir Edward Grey. They sat quietly through the meeting, at
the close of which questions were invited. Several questions were asked
by men and were courteously answered. Then Annie Kenney arose and asked:
"If the Liberal party is returned to power, will they take steps to give
votes for women?" At the same time Christabel held aloft the little
banner that every one in the hall might understand the nature of the
question. Sir Edward Grey returned no answer to Annie's question, and
the men sitting near her forced her rudely into her seat, while a
steward of the meeting pressed his hat over her face. A babel of
shouts, cries and catcalls sounded from all over the hall.
As soon as order was restored Christabel stood up and repeated the
question: "Will the Liberal Government, if returned, give votes to
women?" Again Sir Edward Grey ignored the question, and again a perfect
tumult of shouts and angry cries arose. Mr. William Peacock, chief
constable of Manchester, left the platform and came down to the women,
asking them to write their question, which he promised to hand to the
speaker. They wrote: "Will the Liberal Government give votes to
working-women? Signed, on behalf of the Women's Social and Political
Union, Annie Kenney, member of the Oldham committee of the card-and
blowing-room operatives." They added a line to say that, as one of
96,000 organised women textile-workers, Annie Kenney earnestly desired
an answer to the question.
Mr. Peacock kept his word and handed the question to Sir Edward Grey,
who read it, smiled, and passed it to the others on the platform. They
also read it with smiles, but no answer to the question was made. Only
one lady who was sitting on the platform tried to say something, but the
chairman interrupted by asking Lord Durham to move a vote of thanks to
the speaker. Mr. Winston Churchill seconded the motion, Sir Edward Grey
replied briefly, and the meeting began to break up. Annie Kenney stood
up in her chair and cried out over the noise of shuffling feet and
murmurs of conversation: "Will the Liberal Government give votes to
women?" Then the audience became a mob. They howled, they shouted and
roared, shaking their fists fiercely at the woman who dared to intrude
her question into a man's meeting. Hands were lifted to drag her out of
her chair, but Christabel threw one arm about her as she stood, and with
the other arm warded off the mob, who struck and scratched at her until
her sleeve was red with blood. Still the girls held together and shouted
over and over: "The question! The question! Answer the question!"
Six men, stewards of the meeting, seized Christabel and dragged her down
the aisle, past the platform, other men following with Annie Kenney,
both girls still calling for an answer to their question. On the
platform the Liberal leaders sat silent and unmoved while this
disgraceful scene was taking place, and the mob were shouting and
shrieking from the floor.
Flung into the streets, the two girls staggered to their feet and began
to address the crowds, and to tell them what had taken place in a
Liberal meeting. Within five minutes they were arrested on a charge of
obstruction and, in Christabel's case, of assaulting the police. Both
were summonsed to appear next morning in a police court, where, after a
trial which was a mere farce, Annie Kenney was sentenced to pay a fine
of five shillings, with an alternative of three days in prison, and
Christabel Pankhurst was given a fine of ten shillings or a jail
sentence of one week.
Both girls promptly chose the prison sentence. As soon as they left the
court-room I hurried around to the room where they were waiting, and I
said to my daughter: "You have done everything you could be expected to
do in this matter. I think you should let me pay your fines and take you
home." Without waiting for Annie Kenney to speak, my daughter exclaimed:
"Mother, if you pay my fine I will never go home." Before going to the
meeting she had said, "We will get our question answered or sleep in
prison to-night." I now knew her courage remained unshaken.
Of course the affair created a tremendous sensation, not only in
Manchester, where my husband had been so well known and where I had so
long held public office, but all over England. The comments of the press
were almost unanimously bitter. Ignoring the perfectly well-established
fact that men in every political meeting ask questions and demand
answers of the speakers, the newspapers treated the action of the two
girls as something quite unprecedented and outrageous. They generally
agreed that great leniency had been shown them. Fines and jail-sentences
were too good for such unsexed creatures. "The discipline of the
nursery" would have been far more appropriate. One Birmingham paper
declared that "if any argument were required against giving ladies
political status and power it had been furnished in Manchester."
Newspapers which had heretofore ignored the whole subject now hinted
that while they had formerly been in favour of women's suffrage, they
could no longer countenance it. The Manchester incident, it was said,
had set the cause back, perhaps irrevocably.
This is how it set the cause back. Scores of people wrote to the
newspapers expressing sympathy with the women. The wife of Sir Edward
Grey told her friends that she considered them quite justified in the
means they had taken. It was stated that Winston Churchill, nervous
about his own candidacy in Manchester, visited Strangeways Gaol, where
the two girls were imprisoned, and vainly begged the governor to allow
him to pay their fines. On October 20, when the prisoners were released,
they were given an immense demonstration in Free-Trade Hall, the very
hall from which they had been ejected the week before. The Women's
Social and Political Union received a large number of new members. Above
all, the question of women's suffrage became at once a live topic of
comment from one end of Great Britain to the other.
We determined that from that time on the little "Votes For Women"
banners should appear wherever a prospective member of the Liberal
Government rose to speak, and that there should be no more peace until
the women's question was answered. We clearly perceived that the new
Government, calling themselves Liberal, were reactionary so far as women
were concerned, that they were hostile to women's suffrage, and would
have to be fought until they were conquered, or else driven from office.