by Simon Webb
In nearby Westminster Abbey, tourists were heading towards the exits, the abbey was due to close at 6.00pm and it was now a quarter to. There had been what witnesses described as ‘a terrific explosion’ and then a column of smoke and dust rose from the chapel where the coronation chair was kept and slowly spread through the rest of the abbey. The chair, on which monarchs have sat during their coronations since 1300, was slightly damaged by the bomb, which was powerful enough to have chipped the stonework of the ceiling high overhead. The explosion was heard a long way down Victoria Street and even, as we have seen, in the Houses of Parliament.
The police sealed off Westminster Abbey after the bomb attack and arrested two women. They proved to be harmless Danish tourists and were soon released. Apart from some superficial marks on the walls and ceiling of the chapel in which the coronation chair was kept and a few bits of broken stone carving, there did not appear to be any serious consequences in the aftermath of the explosion. This was regarded as being extremely fortunate because the bomb had been packed with pieces of iron, obviously with the intention of causing as much damage as possible.
It was to be almost 40 years before the discovery was made that a another very ancient relic had been irreparably harmed by suffragettes. At Christmas, 1950, four Scots nationalists ‘kidnapped’ the Stone of Scone, which had been kept beneath the coronation chair for over 600 years and which had originally been brought to London after being captured from the Scots. The four students, who had hidden themselves in the abbey overnight, pulled the sandstone block from under the coronation chair where it rested. To their amazement, they found that it had been broken in half at some time in the past. It is likely that this was a result of the bomb which exploded nearby, almost 40 years earlier.
Apart from the obvious motive of wishing to prevent terrorist activity in the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister and Home Secretary had other good reasons for wishing to put an end to the arson and bombings being carried out by members of the WSPU. One fear was that if the terrorism continued, then members of the public would take matters into their own hands and undertake revenge attacks on the suffragettes. This was not a far-fetched idea and raised the spectre of lynch mobs on the streets of Britain. Events that took place in the days following the bombing of Westminster Abbey showed all too clearly that this was a genuine threat to public order.
On the same day that the bomb was planted in Westminster Abbey, there were two other suffragette attacks, both in Surrey. Reigate cricket pavilion was burned down and a determined attempt was made to set fire to an ancient church in the town of Chipstead. Three separate fires were started, by piling oil-soaked material against the wooden doors of the church. Fortunately, the rector, aided by local residents, managed to put out the fires before they caused much damage, but news of these other attacks did nothing to calm the hostility that many members of the public were now feeling towards the suffragettes. This hostility had nothing whatever to do with the principle of extending the franchise to women. It was simply anger at those responsible for conducting a campaign of random attacks which, if they continued, would inevitably end up in causing more pointless injury or death to innocent bystanders.
The government was right to fear public disorder if something was not done to put an end to the terrorist attacks. The mood of the country was running very strongly against the suffragettes and, by association, the very idea of women’s suffrage was also becoming unpopular. The Sunday before the Westminster Abbey bomb, a number of public meetings were broken up by hostile crowds. At Hyde Park, the police had to rescue a speaker from the WSPU, when a very large and angry crowd assaulted her. At Hampstead, a mob seized two women and began dragging them towards a pond, with the intention of ducking them. Again, the police were forced to intervene. There was similar trouble at Clapham Common, when at a public, open air meeting one of the speakers made reference to bombs. She too, narrowly escaped violence. The situation became even more hazardous for the WSPU after the attack in the Abbey.
The day after the attacks in London and Surrey, some members of the WSPU tried to set up a stand at an agricultural show in Portsmouth. The reaction of those visiting the show was so violently antagonistic towards the sight of suffragette banners that a near-riot ensued, with the women being pelted with bottles and bricks. The police had to rescue the suffragettes and escort them to safety. A day later, there was a similar incident at nearby Southsea.
In London, suffragettes began distributing leaflets at a music hall in the East End and were roughly manhandled and ejected from the theatre. It was noticed that the women in the audience were displaying more dislike of the activists than the men. Two days later, suffragettes attempted to disrupt a service in Westminster Abbey, by standing up and shouting slogans. This was more than a little tactless considering that the Abbey was the very site of one of the latest outrages. The women were chased from the abbey and once again, the police were forced to protect them from the wrath of ordinary men and women who had had enough of terrorism.
On the evening of Saturday, 13 June, just two days after the explosion in Westminster Abbey, there was an attempt to hold a WSPU meeting on open ground at Palmers Green, a district of north London. One of those who helped to organise the meeting was Herbert Goulden, Emmeline Pankhurst’s brother. A crowd gathered, not to hear the speeches of the suffragettes but rather to put an end to the event. Goulden was knocked to the ground and several women were assaulted. Eggs and flour were thrown at those taking part in the meeting. Even when, with the help of the police, Herbert Goulden was put onto a tram, the crowd followed and laid siege to his home. It was a riot in all but name. That same weekend, there were similar disturbances in Leicester and on Hampstead Heath, where a platform set up by members of the WSPU was broken up by the crowd and thrown in a pond.
These were by no means the only attacks on suffragette meetings during this period. In every case, the hostility of the crowds had been provoked by the planting of bombs and fire-raising. Shouts of, ‘Incendiaries!’ often greeted the WSPU activists when they tried to set up their stalls. The small matter of women’s suffrage was forgotten in the outrage at the terrorism of the WSPU.
The aggressive behaviour of crowds towards WSPU speakers from April 1913 onwards has been twisted into another strand of the accepted legend of the suffragettes. Accounts of hostile mobs and photographs of angry men shouting at suffragettes from this time have been represented as evidence of the outrage and disapproval of men at the idea of women being given the vote. In other words, the impression is given that the faces in the photographs are contorted with fury at the thought of women being given the franchise. In fact, these are very often people who have been roused by the terrorism to which the country was being subjected. They would have been just as angry if those carrying out the violent attacks had been not middle-class women but anarchists or Irish bombers. The cause for which the bombing and arson was being carried out was irrelevant; people were infuriated to see churches and libraries wantonly destroyed and bombs being left in public places.
The anger being felt by ordinary people about terrorism is often misrepresented by modern writers on the subject. We are typically told that the suffragettes had to put up with ridicule and anger, the impression being given that these emotions had been aroused by the demands of female enfranchisement. More often than not, the anger directed against the suffragettes was a direct result of the terrorist attacks they were carrying out. It is seldom mentioned that those sent to prison were often women who had been convicted of bombing or arson.
Lloyd George summed up the case succinctly. As early as October 1913 he had told a deputation from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies that parliament’s attitude to female enfranchisement reflected the mood of the country as a whole. Militancy, he said, had converted indifference to hostility. This was even more true in June 1914 than it had been in the previous autumn. Women’s suffrage had become a disreputable cause for many, tarnished by the unending stream
of terrorist attacks.
Fears of public disorder should the suffragettes continue to start fires and plant bombs were proving to be fully justified. Although preventing such outbreaks of violence would in itself be sufficient cause to crack down on the WSPU, Asquith had another, and at least to him, even more powerful motive for putting a stop to the militant actions of the suffragettes. His own position as Prime Minister and the chances of the Liberal Party forming the next government after the election, which was due the following year, were now endangered by the situation that had developed around female suffrage.
Despite his personal opposition to the introduction of parliamentary votes for women, Asquith knew that his own cabinet was evenly divided on the issue. In the Liberal Party as a whole, the question was far more clear-cut. The majority of Liberal MPs favoured the enfranchisement of women, as did the most of the rank and file members of the party. Even had he felt inclined to ride roughshod over the views of so many in his own party, there were good reasons not to do so. Like the Conservatives, the Liberals relied heavily upon the support of their female members. During elections, their help was invaluable. The Conservatives had the Primrose League and the Liberals had the Women’s Liberal Federation. In recent years, the Women’s Federation had declared in support of female enfranchisement and were refusing to work in support of any candidate at a by-election who would not pledge support for the parliamentary vote for women. Worse still, many women were defecting from the Liberals. Between 1912 and 1914, 68 branches of the Women’s Liberal Federation folded up and 18,000 members resigned. Most had transferred their allegiance to the Labour Party.
At the last election, in December 1910, the result had been wafer thin, with the Liberals gaining 272 seats to the Conservative’s 271. The loss of just a few seats at the next election could mean the difference between victory and defeat. As if this were not enough, Lloyd George had promised both Sylvia Pankhurst and the Labour MP George Lansbury that he would refuse to serve in a future Liberal administration that was not fully committed to extending the franchise to women. The idea of a Liberal government without the ‘Welsh Wizard’ was unthinkable.
Asquith knew in June 1914 that he had been outflanked on the question of women’s suffrage. The Labour Party was officially committed to the introduction of universal adult suffrage, the Conservatives were sure to make some more limited offer of their own before the next election and the Liberal Party as a whole was entirely behind votes for women. It was time for a change of tack.
It is by no means unknown for politicians to change their views, even to execute a 180-degree turn on matters about which they have previously appeared to be most passionate. This is in the nature of politics and Asquith was probably quite ready to do an about-turn. There was only one obstacle now in the way of him changing his mind, becoming a convert to the principle of female emancipation, and announcing that the Liberals would go into the next election with a promise of granting the parliamentary vote to women. This barrier preventing the Prime Minister from announcing publicly that he had had a change of heart and wished now to commit his party to extending the franchise to women, was of course none other than the Pankhursts and their suffragettes.
It is one thing for a politician to wriggle like an eel until he is facing the opposite direction. This is by no means an uncommon occurrence. It is another thing entirely for a Prime Minister to appear so weak and indecisive that a few arson attacks and terrorist bombings will be enough to force him to abandon a course of action or change radically the direction of the government which he leads. The consequences of this can be disastrous.
The bill granting Home Rule to Ireland was still moving forward, but in Ulster the Protestants were in open revolt. Two months before the Home Secretary announced his latest moves against the Women’s Social and Political Union, enormous consignments of arms were landed in the north of Ireland at the ports of Larne and Bangor. These consisted of 24,000 rifles and 3 million rounds of ammunition. A provisional government had been formed in the province of Ulster and it was the intention to resist the imposition of Home Rule by armed force. There was considerable doubt that the army would be willing or able to prevent this and the government in Westminster was faced with the very real prospect of civil war breaking out in the United Kingdom.
If ever there was a time when a British Prime Minister needed to appear steadfast and resolute, thoroughly determined not to give in to the threat of violence, then the early summer of 1914 was that time. To give the impression of being intimidated by bombings or shooting would have been to send the worst possible message to the armed paramilitaries in Ulster; that here was a man who could be bullied and blustered into submission. For Asquith to appear in this character could have been enough to encourage the Ulster rebels into beginning an armed insurrection. A change of policy about women’s suffrage was simply not possible if it should look for a moment as though it was the terrorist campaign that had persuaded Asquith to change his mind.
It was not only in Ireland that the Prime Minister’s actions were being closely watched for any sign of weakness. The industrial unrest that had swept the country during the ‘Great Unrest’ of 1911 was still simmering away. A prime minister who was so scared of a few fires that he would surrender would have been something of a godsend to some of the more militant trade unionists.
On the international stage too, things were moving towards the greatest crisis of modern times, when the slightest sign of hesitation or lack of determination would be an open invitation for other countries to strike. When, in August, Germany invaded neutral Belgium, one of the calculations being made in Berlin was whether or not the British had the strength and determination to go to war for the sake of Belgium. In both Berlin and Belfast, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was being closely watched for the least sign of weakness. For all these reasons, Asquith could not for a moment consider promising any sort of extension of the franchise to women until all militant actions had ceased for good. As soon as this had been achieved, then he could leave a decent interval, before explaining that he had been persuaded by those around him that it was time for a change.
Unfortunately, there seemed to be no sign at all that the militant suffragettes were planning to call a halt to their campaign. The Westminster Abbey bomb was detonated on the Thursday. The following Sunday saw the bombing of another church. Just after evensong, there was an explosion in St George’s Church in Hanover Square. This place of worship in London’s West End, was a popular location for society weddings. One man who had married there was former American president, Theodore Roosevelt. By coincidence, he was staying at the nearby home of an old friend, having arrived in London only the previous day. The explosion broke several stained glass windows, but did no other damage. The next day, a suffragette was caught with a bomb at the horse show taking place at Olympia.
It was not only the government that had tired of the suffragette militancy and realised correctly that it was preventing any progress on the gaining of women’s suffrage. The Labour Party was officially committed to extending the franchise to women, but had no time at all for the WSPU and their increasingly mad and dangerous bids for publicity.
Speaking on the Saturday following the Westminster Abbey bomb, Philip Snowden, who would go on to become the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, said uncompromisingly:
I do not believe that any cause can be promisingly advanced by immoral means. My record on the women’s question is known to all of you. I totally disagree with the claim that militancy has advanced the cause. A year or so back there was the prospect of a measure passing the House of Commons, and I say now that, through the action of a certain class, the suffrage question is as dead as Queen Anne. There is not now a single member who has the heart to take up the question.
Snowden’s own wife was a dedicated suffragist who also disapproved very strongly of the terrorist tactics the WSPU had adopted. Speaking herself a few months earlier, she had said that she would rather wait a hund
red years for the vote, than see enfranchisement being achieved by methods which were themselves unjust, because they inflicted injury and suffering upon innocent people.
Asquith was caught in a position where making some sort of concession on suffrage would be very advantageous to him and his party at the next election and yet to make that concession would be political suicide while the terrorism continued. He and his Home Secretary redoubled their efforts to close down the WSPU and put a stop to the violence.
That the government was determined to prevent the suffragettes from being able to continue their violent campaign was clear from the actions taken by the police. On 23 May, Lincoln’s Inn House, the WSPU headquarters in Kingsway, was raided again and Grace Roe, who was temporarily in charge, was arrested. A lot of papers were seized. The WSPU then moved to another office, in Tothill Street, near parliament itself. On 9 June, this too was raided by the police and more paperwork taken away. The next day, the suffragettes moved their headquarters again, this time to No. 2 Campden Hill Square in Kensington, the district where many of their wealthiest sponsors lived. They had no sooner settled in than the police arrived with another warrant and once again, papers were taken away. It was plain that there would be no let-up in the police attention.
In July, Sidney Drew, manager of the Victoria House Printing Company, was summonsed in connection with an edition of The Suffragette which he had printed. It was alleged that as a consequence of material published in the 2 January 1914 issue, he had been ‘soliciting, inciting, and endeavouring to persuade divers women, members of the Women’s Social and Political Union, and others to commit malicious damage to property’.
Drew was convicted of this offence at the Old Bailey in July and sent to prison for two months. It was very clear that the government was going to be pursuing anybody associated with or having any connection at all to the terrorists. At the same time, Asquith was putting out feelers with a view to striking some sort of deal with non-militant suffragists and signalling that he would be amenable to a change in the franchise in favour of women, if only the violence ended.