It is always more difficult to carry out a weak policy than a strong one, and the adoption of this particular policy not only failed to advance the Suffrage cause, but also failed in one object for which it primarily was designed, namely, to prevent dissension in the ranks of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies itself. Many members at once seceded and joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, and many of those who did not actually resign their membership of the old society now threw all their energy into working for the younger, more active and courageous body. On the other hand, there were still those Liberal women who cared more for party than for principle to be reckoned with, and one of these, Lady Carlisle, resigned the Vice Presidentship of the N. U. W. S. S., which she had accepted but a few days before the new by-election policy had been announced, because, in her party-ridden opinion, to oppose a Liberal candidate who was opposed to their enfranchisement, seemed too “drastic “and “extreme “a course for women to adopt.
When the by-election policy of the N. U. W. S. S. came to be put into practice its unworkable character was immediately demonstrated. The candidates at Hexham were interviewed, with the result that the Unionist, Colonel Bates, returned what was considered to be a favourable answer, whilst the reply of Mr. R. D. Holt, the Liberal, was said to be unsatisfactory. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies was therefore, according to the newly framed policy, obliged to support the Conservative candidate, but, when they proceeded to do so, many of the Liberal members of the organisation objected, and some even went so far as to work for the Liberal candidate in opposition to their Secretary, Miss Edith Palliser, and the rest of the Society. To make matters even more embarrassing for those who were endeavouring to carry out the policy the Liberal candidate now veered round a point or two — as candidates so often will — and stated that he had always been in favour of women’s enfranchisement and that his only fear was that women were not asking for their votes upon a sufficiently democratic basis. He was therefore proclaimed by his supporters to be a staunch and devoted friend of the Women’s Suffrage Cause.
Meanwhile the Suffragettes foresaw very clearly that this new policy which would sometimes cause the Suffragists to support the Government candidate whom they themselves were strenuously working against would confuse the electors and increase the difficulty of explaining the anti-Government policy, and, though the anti-Government policy was a very simple one, even simple things are difficult to explain when hosts of people are striving to misrepresent them.
In May, the National Union of Suffrage Societies decided to run a Parliamentary candidate of their own, at a by-election in Wimbledon, and had chosen as their nominee a well known Liberal, the Hon. Bertrand Russell. The crushing defeat which resulted has unfortunately been quoted as a proof that the majority of the Parliamentary voters in that constituency were opposed to the principle of women’s enfranchisement, but an impartial examination into the facts shows clearly that they do not in any way justify this conclusion.
The Wimbledon seat had always been held by the Conservatives, and their majority at the General Election, in spite of the then great Liberal revival, had numbered more than 2,000 votes. Now, with the well known and typical old Conservative, Mr. Henry Chaplin, in the field, the Liberal Party considered it wisest not to fight. Therefore, but for the intervention of the National Union of Suffage Societies, who opposed him because of his anti-Suffragist views, Mr. Chaplin would have been returned without a contest. Opinions may reasonably be divided as to whether the game of running Parliamentary candidates would possibly be worth the candle to a Women’s Suffrage Society, but everyone will surely agree that if Suffrage candidates were to be run at all, the chief object of the Suffragists ought to have been to efface as far as possible all other points of political difference between the rival candidates in order that upon the question of Votes for Women, and upon that question alone, the electors might have decided how to vote. To ensure that the single issue should predominate, it might have been well to choose as the Suffragist nominee a candidate whose views upon general political questions were, either similar to those of his anti-Suffrage opponent, or altogether colourless and obscure. In any case it was essential that the Suffragist candidate should be willing to subordinate all his other political opinions and to concentrate his attention absolutely upon the question of Votes for Women. In this Election, however, though it was well known that Liberalism was unpopular, the Suffragists chose to represent them a strong Liberal who was determined to make the election contest an opportunity for propagating his Liberal principles. That Mr. Bertrand Russell cared very much more for Liberalism than he did for Women’s Votes was at once apparent. With the news that he had consented to stand as the Suffrage candidate came the announcement that he would not in any circumstances have agreed to do so had an official Liberal been nominated, and he showed clearly that he had no intention of standing out against the wishes of his party leaders in order to press forward the Women’s Cause. Right from the outset the record of the Liberal Government, and the general principles of Liberalism were the points constantly put before the electors, and it was upon these points that the Election was really fought. Mr. Russell’s Election Address, which was in fact the manifesto of the Suffragists, advocated Free Trade, the Taxation of Land Values and other questions quite unconnected with their cause. In his last message to the electors he said:
I ask for the Liberal vote because I am a Liberal through and through. I am just as much a Liberal as dozens of the Ministerialists in the House of Commons, who are as keen as ever I can be upon the Women’s Suffrage question. To those who waver about giving me their vote because they have doubts on the women’s question, I would ask, “Do you prefer Mr. Chaplin, the protectionist and crusted Tory, to one who is at least a Free Trader and Progressive?” Such persons should remember that every vote not given to me is given to my opponent!
The Conservatives eagerly seized the opportunity of fighting Mr. Russell on the ground of his Liberalism and scouted the idea of his being considered a Women’s Suffrage candidate. At the same time the Liberals dissociated themselves from his candidature. It was no great matter for surprise, therefore, that Mr. Russell was defeated by more than 6,000 votes. The figures were:
The figures at the General Election had been:
It is interesting to note that in the six elections which had taken place since 1885 the Liberals had only thought it worth their while to contest the seat on three occasions, and on one of these the Liberal vote had fallen below that recorded for Mr. Bertrand Russell.
Perhaps the most unfortunate feature of the contest was that those of the Suffragist women who genuinely wished to further the interests of the women’s cause without respect to party, instead of taking command of the situation, leading their candidate aright, and showing that they were determined that Woman Suffrage should be the only feature of the election, allowed the contest to be dominated by Mr. Russell and his Liberal opinions. Herein lay the great point of difference between the Suffragists and the Suffragettes. The Suffragists were ever prone to look upon their cause as a side issue and to apologise for any impatient attempt to press it to the front. The Suffragettes, on the other hand, were ready to stake their all upon it and constantly proclaimed it to be the highest and greatest in the world.
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1 If Mr. Stanley is the saint and Mr. Twyford the hero, the Suffragettes are the politicians of the Election. … I confess that until I had seen the Suffragette Ironsides at work I thought the Tariff Reform Ruperts unsurpassed. The organization of the Suffragettes is as good as their political insight. They adopt the “fan” formation. They usually have three or four local centres in a scattered constituency. The members of each group in each centre live together irrespective of class differences. It is a pleasure to see the fan opened, controlled and set by the controlling hand at the centre. Early in the morning while men are sleeping or at the Committee Rooms a group of women will walk up the street of their cent
re. … At the crossroads of each centre each single group becomes a fan itself. Each member takes a different road. Chalk in hand, each woman whilst, going to one meeting, makes the announcement of another. The men usually hunt in couples. They do not care to face these hostile audiences single-handed, but each of these women, as often as not, tackles an audience alone. If combined hammering is necessary the central hand sends to the rescue. Their staying power, judging them by the standard of men, is extraordinary. By taking afternoon as well as evening meetings they have worked twice as hard as the men. They are up earlier, they retire just as late. Women against men, they are better speakers, more logical, better informed, better phrased, with a surer insight for the telling argument.
CHAPTER X
THE FORMATION OF THE WOMEN’S FREEDOM LEAGUE. REVIVAL OF MILITANT TACTICS
IN spite of its unprecedented growth the Women’s Social and Political Union was now approaching a very difficult crisis in its history; little by little, differences of opinion in regard to questions of organisation and policy had begun to show themselves amongst the members of its governing body and finally, in September, 1907, a reconstruction of the Committee and Constitution of the Union took place. Now, although every one of the original founders of the Union remained, a number of those who had for some time belonged to the Central Committee left to form a new militant society called the Women’s Freedom League which opened offices at 18 Buckingham Street, Strand,1 and of which Mrs. Despard became Honorary Treasurer, Mrs. Billington Grieg, Honorary Organiser, and Mrs. Edith How Martyn, Honorary Secretary. At the same time a reconstruction of the organising basis of the Women’s Social and Political Union itself was effected, and it became obligatory for all members of the Union to sign the following pledge:
I endorse the objects and methods of the Women’s Social and Political Union and hereby undertake not to support the candidate of any political party at Parliamentary elections until women have obtained the Parliamentary vote.
All the prominent members of the W. S. P. U. who had not already done so now formally severed their connexion with the political parties to which they had at one time belonged. During the past year a useful little weekly paper entitled Women’s Franchise had been started by Mr. and Mrs. Francis as the joint organ of the various Suffrage Societies, and in the month of October, 1907, Votes for Women, the organ of the Women’s Social and Political Union, was first issued as a monthy paper, by Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence. Our members at once volunteered to sell it in the streets, and were soon turning themselves into sandwich women and parading about with its contents bills slung from their shoulders, riding on horseback through Piccadilly with its posters hanging from the saddle, selling it from decorated busses and carriages, canvassing for subscribers and advertisers for it and evolving a hundred and one devices to increase its sale. As a result of these efforts both its size and circulation increased rapidly. In May, 1908, it became a penny weekly paper, and in the beginning of the year 1909 its circulation had risen to between 30,000 and 50,000 copies weekly, and it was handed over by Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence to the Union itself as a paying concern.
On October 5th a Woman’s Suffrage procession was organised in Edinburgh by the Militant and Non-Militant Women’s Suffragist Societies, and some four thousand women from all parts of Scotland assembled under the shadow of Arthur’s Seat and, cheered by upwards of a hundred thousand people who had gathered to see them, marched thence to the Synod Hall, where there was held a crowded demonstration which overflowed into the Pillar Hall.
Selling and advertising “Votes for Women” in Kingsway
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was in Edinburgh at the time, and was asked to receive a deputation from the processionists, but, though this was backed by many influential Scotswomen, he refused. When on October 22nd, he spoke at Dunfermline, in his own constituency, the Premier was obliged, as Scotch “heckling” is a recognised institution, to reply to the questioning of women as well as of men. He was asked: “As the Prime Minister believes in Women’s Suffrage, would he suggest some fresh methods which we could adopt in order to gain our enfranchisement?”
He replied: “I think women ought to go on agitating, holding meetings and pestering as much as they can, as all other men and women who are interested in public questions have to do.” Whatever this piece of advice may have been intended to suggest, it certainly sounded very much like a justification of the policy of “pestering” members of the Government at their meetings.
For six months the Suffragettes had devoted themselves to strengthening and extending their organisation, electioneering, the distribution of literature and the holding of propaganda meetings of which, between May and October, some 3,000 had taken place, including a demonstration in Boggart Hole Clough, Manchester, attended by 15,000 people, another in Stevenson Square, Manchester, attended by 20,000 people, and meetings in Hyde Park each Sunday at many of which the audiences had numbered upwards of 12,000. Nevertheless the question of Votes for Women, which had bulked so largely in the papers whilst the militant tactics had been in full swing, had almost entirely disappeared from the Press during these latter months and anyone who judged from the newspapers alone might well have imagined that the agitation had died down. This fact, together with the Government’s continued refusal even to consider the question of granting Votes to Women, was enough, without the Prime Minister’s curiously provocative statement, to convince the Suffragettes that the time had come to recommence an active militant campaign, and from this time onward a Cabinet Minister’s Meeting was invaded on almost every day until Parliament met in the new year. Again and again members of our Union, with a courage and perseverance which too few people have ever recognised, presented themselves at these meetings, and, having asked their question or made their protest, were rudely set upon by crowds of stewards and flung fiercely and violently out into the street.
Many outsiders preferred to look upon the women who faced this violence as being harder and less sensitive or as differing in some other way from the rest of their sex, but this was not by any means the case. Many of those who bore the worst brunt of the battle were women who had hitherto taken no part in politics, and had always led quiet and sheltered lives. Others had had to fight hard for their livelihood. Indeed they were of all ages and of all classes. Week by week greater numbers of them were joining the Union and coming forward to take a part in this work; but young and old, rich and poor, were treated in the same way. Meanwhile Cabinet Ministers either expressed surprised and horrified disapproval of their behaviour or sought instead to cover them with ridicule. Mr. Sidney Buxton, at his meeting at Poplar on October 12th cynically called to his women questioners, whom the stewards were maltreating, to “behave decorously like men.” That old self-styled “friend” of Women’s Suffrage, Mr. Haldane, addressing a meeting of women Liberals in Glasgow on January 8, 1908, devoted the greater part of his speech to condemning the Suffragettes, saying that men did not like to be fought with “pin pricks,” and that, though women might “wage war,” he should advise them “not to do it with bodkins.” At a meeting in his own constituency, shortly afterwards, he insisted that the women who interrupted him should be ejected by the police, and when finally, with bruised and aching limbs and torn and dishevelled clothing, they had all been thrown out of the hall, he treated the whole matter as a joke saying that he was “bachelor-proof against these belles.” Mr. Asquith, like the Prime Minister, was forced to reply to a question put to him in his own Scotch constituency, at Tayport, on October 29th. There he said that, if the vote were granted to women it would do “more harm than good,” and that in any case, the House of Commons is hot elected on a basis of Universal Suffrage, for “children are not represented there.” At several meetings, notably those of Mr. Asquith at Nuneaton on November 16th, and of Mr. Winston Churchill in the historic Free Trade Hall, the stewards behaved with so much brutality that the police intervened to protect the women.
But though at these gatherings of Lib
eral partisans the women were usually flung outside without delay, there were still some occasions on which the audience rallied round them. Incidents of this kind occurred when Mr. Herbert Gladstone, now frequently nick-named “the prison Secretary,” spoke in his constituency in Leeds on November 2ist and 22nd. On the first night the audience prevented the ejection of women questioners, and on the second Mr. Gladstone was howled down by both men and women, and next morning the papers stated in startling headlines that the Home Secretary had been “put to flight.” Mr. Lewis Harcourt, the first Commissioner of Works, had a similar experience in his constituency, the Rossendale Valley, on October 28th. During the day he declared to a deputation of women that he was opposed to their cause “because he was.” At his evening meeting women protested again so vigorously and in such numbers that it was broken up, and his departing audience flocked to hear Mrs. Pankhurst, who was speaking from a waggon outside the hall. On November 22nd Mr. Lloyd George stated to a deputation of the Members of the old non-Militant Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage that votes could not be granted to women until the subject of their enfranchisement had been made a test question at a General Election, and disposed of the contention that this had already been done, because over four hundred Members of Parliament out of 670 returned at the last General Election had been pledged to support Women’s Suffrage, by saying that these pledges did not count because they had not been made to constituents. As unenfranchised women were no man’s constituents, Mr. Lloyd George, therefore, evidently saw no harm in the breaking of promises that had been made to them, and he gave no indication as to how, whilst neither political party was prepared to put votes for women upon its programme, women were to make their franchise a test question at election times, except either by obtaining pledges from individual members or by attacking the Government in power as the Suffragettes were doing. He yet went on to say that he should oppose “very strenuously any legislation that excluded any class of women from its scope, and any measure to enfranchise women that would not give to the working man’s wife as much voice in the making of the laws of the country as her husband possessed.” This meant, of course, that Mr. Lloyd George would “strenuously oppose” the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill to give women the vote on the same terms as those upon which it had already been or might in the future be granted to men, but he did not seem to realise that if he meant what he said and wished to act with honesty, fairness and consistency towards this great question, he ought strenuously to oppose the status quo, which not only refused a voice in the making of the laws which governed her to the wife of the working man but to every other woman beside.
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