My own story
won. This is still our inflexible custom. Moreover, if at any time a
member, or a group of members, loses faith in our policy; if any one
begins to suggest, that some other policy ought to be substituted, or if
she tries to confuse the issue by adding other policies, she ceases at
once to be a member. Autocratic? Quite so. But, you may object, a
suffrage organisation ought to be democratic. Well the members of the
W. S. P. U. do not agree with you. We do not believe in the
effectiveness of the ordinary suffrage organisation. The W. S. P. U. is
not hampered by a complexity of rules. We have no constitution and
by-laws; nothing to be amended or tinkered with or quarrelled over at an
annual meeting. In fact, we have no annual meeting, no business
sessions, no elections of officers. The W. S. P. U. is simply a suffrage
army in the field. It is purely a volunteer army, and no one is obliged
to remain in it. Indeed we don't want anybody to remain in it who does
not ardently believe in the policy of the army.
The foundation of our policy is opposition to a Government who refuse
votes to women. To support by word or deed a Government hostile to woman
suffrage is simply to invite them to go on being hostile. We oppose the
Liberal party because it is in power. We would oppose a Unionist
government if it were in power and were opposed to woman suffrage. We
say to women that as long as they remain in the ranks of the Liberal
party they give their tacit approval to the Government's anti-suffrage
policy. We say to members of Parliament that as long as they support any
of the Government's policies they give their tacit approval to the
anti-suffrage policy. We call upon all sincere suffragists to leave the
Liberal party until women are given votes on equal terms with men. We
call upon all voters to vote against Liberal candidates until the
Liberal Government does justice to women.
We did not invent this policy. It was most successfully pursued by Mr.
Parnell in his Home Rule struggle more than thirty-five years ago. Any
one who is old enough to remember the stirring days of Parnell may
recall how, in 1885, the Home Rulers, by persistently voting against the
Government in the House of Commons, forced the resignation of Mr.
Gladstone and his Cabinet. In the general election which followed, the
Liberal party was again returned to power, but by the slender majority
of eighty-four, the Home Rulers having fought every Liberal candidate,
even those, who, like my husband, were enthusiastic believers in Home
Rule. In order to control the House and keep his leadership, Mr.
Gladstone was obliged to bring in a Government Home Rule Bill. The
downfall, through private intrigue, and the subsequent death of Parnell
prevented the bill from becoming law. For many years afterward the Irish
Nationalists had no leader strong enough to carry on Parnell's
anti-government policy, but within late years it was resumed by Mr.
James Redmond, with the result that the Commons passed a Home Rule
Bill.
The contention of the old-fashioned suffragists, and of the politicians
as well, has always been that an educated public opinion will ultimately
give votes to women without any great force being exerted in behalf of
the reform. We agree that public opinion must be educated, but we
contend that even an educated public opinion is useless unless it is
vigorously utilised. The keenest weapon is powerless unless it is
courageously wielded. In the year 1906 there was an immensely large
public opinion in favour of woman suffrage. But what good did that do
the cause? We called upon the public for a great deal more than
sympathy. We called upon it to demand of the Government to yield to
public opinion and give women votes. And we declared that we would wage
war, not only on all anti-suffrage forces, but on all neutral and
non-active forces. Every man with a vote was considered a foe to woman
suffrage unless he was prepared to be actively a friend.
Not that we believed that the campaign of education ought to be given
up. On the contrary, we knew that education must go on, and in much more
vigorous fashion than ever before. The first thing we did was to enter
upon a sensational campaign to arouse the public to the importance of
woman suffrage, and to interest it in our plans for forcing the
Government's hands. I think we can claim that our success in this regard
was instant, and that it has proved permanent. From the very first, in
those early London days, when we were few in numbers and very poor in
purse, we made the public aware of the woman suffrage movement as it had
never been before. We adopted Salvation Army methods and went out into
the highways and the byways after converts. We threw away all our
conventional notions of what was "ladylike" and "good form," and we
applied to our methods the one test question, Will it help? Just as the
Booths and their followers took religion to the street crowds in such
fashion that the church people were horrified, so we took suffrage to
the general public in a manner that amazed and scandalised the other
suffragists.
We had a lot of suffrage literature printed, and day by day our members
went forth and held street meetings. Selecting a favourable spot, with a
chair for a rostrum, one of us would ring a bell until people began to
stop to see what was going to happen. What happened, of course, was a
lively suffrage speech, and the distribution of literature. Soon after
our campaign had started, the sound of the bell was a signal for a crowd
to spring up as if by magic. All over the neighbourhood you heard the
cry: "Here are the Suffragettes! Come on!" We covered London in this
way; we never lacked an audience, and best of all, an audience to which
the woman-suffrage doctrine was new. We were increasing our favourable
public as well as waking it up. Besides these street meetings, we held
many hall and drawing-room meetings, and we got a great deal of press
publicity, which was something never accorded the older suffrage
methods.
Our plans included the introduction of a Government suffrage bill at
the earliest possible moment, and in the spring of 1906 we sent a
deputation of about thirty of our members to interview the Prime
Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The Prime Minister, it was
stated, was not at home; so in a few days we sent another deputation.
This time the servant agreed to carry our request to the Prime Minister.
The women waited patiently on the doorstep of the official residence,
No. 10 Downing Street, for nearly an hour. Then the door opened and two
men appeared. One of the men addressed the leader of the deputation,
roughly ordering her and the others to leave. "We have sent a message to
the Prime Minister," she replied, "and we are waiting for the answer."
"There will be no answer," was the stern rejoinder, and the door closed.
"Yes, there will be an answer," exclaimed the leader, and she seized the
door-knocker and banged it sharply. Instantly the men reappeared, and
one of them called to a policeman standing near, "Take this woman in
charge." The order was obeyed, and the peaceful deputation saw its
leader taken off to Canon Row Station.
Instantly the women protested vigorously. Annie Kenney began to address
the crowd that had gathered, and Mrs. Drummond actually forced her way
past the doorkeeper into the sacred residence of the Prime Minister of
the British Empire! Her arrest and Annie's followed. The three women
were detained at the police station for about an hour, long enough, the
Prime Minister probably thought, to frighten them thoroughly and teach
them not to do such dreadful things again. Then he sent them word that
he had decided not to prosecute them, but would, on the contrary,
receive a deputation from the W. S. P. U., and, if they cared to attend,
from other suffrage societies as well.
All the suffrage organisations at once began making preparations for the
great event. At the same time two hundred members of Parliament sent a
petition to the Prime Minister, asking him to receive their committee
that they might urge upon him the necessity of a Government measure for
woman suffrage. Sir Henry fixed May 19th as the day on which he would
receive a joint deputation from Parliament and from the women's suffrage
organisations.
The W. S. P. U. determined to make the occasion as public as possible,
and began preparations for a procession and a demonstration. When the
day came we assembled at the foot of the beautiful monument to the
warrior-queen, Boadicea, that guards the entrance to Westminster Bridge,
and from there we marched to the Foreign Office. At the meeting eight
women spoke in behalf of an immediate suffrage measure, and Mr. Keir
Hardie presented the argument for the suffrage members of Parliament. I
spoke for the W. S. P. U., and I tried to make the Prime Minister see
that no business could be more pressing than ours. I told him that the
group of women organised in our Union felt so strongly the necessity for
women enfranchisement that they were prepared to sacrifice for it
everything they possessed, their means of livelihood, their very lives,
if necessary. I begged him to make such a sacrifice needless by doing us
justice now.
What answer do you think Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman made us? He
assured us of his sympathy with our cause, his belief in its justice,
and his confidence in our fitness to vote. And then he told us to have
patience and wait; he could do nothing for us because some of his
Cabinet were opposed to us. After a few more words the usual vote of
thanks was moved, and the deputation was dismissed. I had not expected
anything better, but it wrung my heart to see the bitter disappointment
of the W. S. P. U. women who had waited in the street to hear from the
leaders the result of the deputation. We held a great meeting of protest
that afternoon, and determined to carry on our agitation with increased
vigor.
Now that it had been made plain that the Government were resolved not to
bring in a suffrage bill, there was nothing to do but to continue our
policy of waking up the country, not only by public speeches and
demonstrations, but by a constant heckling of Cabinet Ministers. Since
the memorable occasion when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were
thrown out of Sir Edward Grey's meeting in Manchester, and afterward
imprisoned for the crime of asking a courteous question, we had not lost
an opportunity of addressing the same question to every Cabinet Minister
we could manage to encounter. For this we have been unmercifully
criticised, and in a large number of cases most brutally handled.
In almost every one of my American meetings I was asked the question,
"What good do you expect to accomplish by interrupting meetings?" Is it
possible that the time-honoured, almost sacred English privilege of
interrupting is unknown in America? I cannot imagine a political meeting
from which "the Voice" was entirely absent. In England it is invariably
present. It is considered the inalienable right of the opposition to
heckle the speaker and to hurl questions at him which are calculated to
spoil his arguments. For instance, when Liberals attend a Conservative
gathering they go prepared to shatter by witticisms and pointed
questions all the best effects of the Conservative orators. The next day
you will read in Liberal newspapers headlines like these: "The Voice in
Fine Form," "Short Shrift for Tory Twaddle," "Awkward Answers from the
Enemy's Platform." In the body of the article you will learn that "Lord
X found that the Liberals at his meeting were more than a match for
him," that "there was continued interruption during Sir So-and-so's
speech," that "Lord M fared badly last night in his encounter with the