The Suffragette

  Then as usual the women were hurried off in the van to prison, the Holloway gates were closed upon them, and the Government settled down to forget them as far as it could until next time.

  February 28th was the day for the discussion of the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill, in moving its second reading, Mr. H. Y. Stanger, whilst he carefully dissociated himself from the methods of the Suffragettes, reminded the House that, if in the course of a political agitation, excesses were committed, the authorities should search for the cause of the discontent and apply an appropriate remedy. Mr. Cathcart Wason, another Liberal member, but an anti-Suffragist, declared on the other hand that the Suffragette movement was founded on riot, and that the House should not “yield to clamour” ; yet with an entire lack of consistency, he went on to extol physical force, saying that because in his opinion women could make no contribution to this, they ought not to be allowed to vote. Evidently he forgot that, whilst the whole trend of civilisation has been in the direction of mental rather than physical dominance, in the age when physical force was the governing power, women were actually members of the legislature and, that they retained the right to vote for Members of Parliament throughout the ages when its possession was looked upon as a burden and until, having become a privilege, it was wrested from them. But all this talk was mere word spinning. It was a pronouncement from the Government benches, that was eagerly awaited. As last time, it was Mr. Herbert Gladstone who spoke, and for the Ministry, and he soon disclosed the fact that the Government was still determined to make no move. It was the old story of opposition in the Cabinet and the old excuse that no party in the House was united either for or against the question. As for the Bill he himself intended to vote for it, for, he said, making an important admission which his colleagues might well have taken to heart, “It may be imperfect, but at any rate it removes a disqualification and an inequality which have been for so long a deep source of complaint with great masses of the people of this country.” Then Mr. Gladstone went on to make some very remarkable statements, of which both he and the Government were afterwards to be reminded. He said amongst other things:

  Men have had to struggle for centuries for their political rights…. On the question of Women’s Suffrage, experience shows that predominance of argument alone — and I believe that that has been attained — is not enough to win the political day.

  In any reform movement, he went on to explain, various stages had to be gone through; first there was the stage of “academic discussion,” and the ventilation of “pious opinions” unaccompanied by “effective action,” but after this, he continued, becoming perhaps a little carried away by his own words ;

  Comes the time when political dynamics are far more important than political argument. You have to move a great inert mass of opinion which, in the early stages, always exists in the country in regard to questions of the first magnitude…. Men have learned this lesson and know the necessity for demonstrating the greatness of their movement and for establishing that force majeure which actuates and arms a Government for effective work. That is the task before the supporters of this great movement…. Looking back at the great political crises in the thirties, the sixties and the eighties, it will be found that people did not go about in small crowds, nor were they content with enthusiastic meetings in large halls; they assembled in their tens of thousands all over the country.

  “But,” said Mr. Gladstone, “of course it is not to be expected that women can assemble in such masses,” but, “power belongs to the masses and through this power a Government can be influenced into more effective action than a Government will be likely to take under present conditions.”

  Mr. Rees (Liberal) then made an attempt to talk out this Bill as he had done that of Mr. Dickinson the year before, and, after firing off all the jokes that he could think of, he fell back upon the Scriptures, saying, “Jerusalem is ruined and Judah has fallen. As for my people, children are their oppressors and women rule over them…. Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks, therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion and in that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments.”

  But at this point he was interrupted by Lord Robert Cecil who moved the closure of the debate, and, on the Speaker’s accepting the motion and its being agreed to without a division, a vote was taken upon the Bill itself, in which 271 members voted for the Bill and only ninety-two against. There was therefore a favourable majority of 179, the largest that had ever been cast in support of Women’s Suffrage.

  Unfortunately it now appeared that Mr. Stanger had been informed beforehand that the closure resolution, which would prevent the talking out of the Bill, would only be accepted on condition that he, as the Bill’s sponsor, would move that it be referred to a Committee of the whole House instead of passing automatically to one of the Grand Committees. Mr. Stanger had agreed to the condition and now fulfiled the promise that had been exacted, and the result was that nothing further could be done with the Bill unless the Government would provide time for its discussion.

  Had the Cabinet been prepared to act honourably and to stand by the statement of their spokesman, Mr. Gladstone, the position would now have been that, if the women who wanted votes could organize a series of demonstrations which could compare with those held by men in support of the various extensions of the franchise that had already taken place, the Government would concede their demands and would either provide time for the passage into law of Mr. Stanger’s Bill or introduce and put through its various stages a measure of their own framing. The Women’s Social and Political Union were prepared to accept Mr. Gladstone’s challenge.

  When Mrs. Pankhurst and the other women had gone to prison, their comrades of the W. S. P. U., at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence’s suggestion, had entered upon a week of self-denial in order to raise funds for the campaign. The thought of those who were in prison spurred on every member of the Union to renewed zeal. Some went canvassing from house to house for money. Others stood with collecting boxes at regular pitches in the street. At the Kensington High Street District Railway Station, for instance, four well known women writers, Miss Evelyn Sharpe, Miss May Sinclair, Miss Violet Hunt, and Miss Clemence Housman, were gathering in pennies all through those wintry days. Some women sold flowers, swept crossings, became pavement artists and played barrel organs. Poorer members obliged to work continuously for a living, denied themselves sugar and milk in their tea, butter on their bread, and walked to and from their work, in order to be able to give something to the funds. The result of this week of earnest effort was to be announced at a great meeting at the Albert Hall on March 19th, to advertise which a great box kite, with a flag attached, was hanging over the Houses of Parliament for a fortnight, whilst a similar flag floated over Holloway Gaol to cheer the prisoners within.

  Every seat in the great Albert Hall was sold long before the day of the meeting, and hundreds of people were turned away at the doors. The vast audience was composed almost entirely of women, and there were 200 women stewards in white dresses. The platform was decorated with flowers and thronged with ex-prisoners and the officials of the Union, but as the sentences of Mrs. Pankhurst and eight of her comrades were not to expire until the following morning, the Chairman’s seat which the founder of the Union should have occupied, was left vacant and in it was placed a large white card bearing the inscription “Mrs. Pankhurst’s chair.”

  Throughout that great gathering there was a wonderful spirit of unity and not one woman there could wish in her heart, as so many millions have done, “if I had only been a man.” No, they were rather like to pity those who were not women and so could not join in this great fight, for to-day it was the woman’s battle. The time was gone when she must always play a minor part, applauding, ministering, comforting, performing useful functions if you will, incurring risks, too, and making sacrifices, but always being treated and always thinking of herself as a mere inciden
t of the struggle outside the wide main stream of life. To-day this battle of theirs seemed to the women to be the greatest in the world, all other conflicts appeared minor to it. A great wave of enthusiasm had caught them up and they were ready to break out into cheers and clapping at the least excuse. Fate, in the person of the Government, had provided an incident entirely in keeping with their mood, for Christabel immediately announced that Mrs. Pankhurst and the remaining prisoners had been unexpectedly released, and Mrs. Pankhurst herself walked quietly on to the platform to take possession of the vacant chair.

  Then it was a wonderful sight to see the up-springing of those thousands of women from those rows and rows of seats and tiers and tiers of boxes and galleries sloping to the roof of the great circular hall. There was a sea of waving arms and handkerchiefs and a long chorus of cheers,— with no greater welcome could any leader have been met. The founder of the Union stood there quite still in her dark grey dress, and her face, usually pale, had that strangely blanched look, which comes to prisoners. When, as the applause subsided, she stepped forward to speak to the assembled women, it was evident that she was deeply moved by their greeting, and as she told how the chief wardress had come to her cell at two o’clock that afternoon to tell her that an order had come for her immediate release, one felt that she was very tired and almost overwhelmed by the sharp contrast between that great brightly lighted hall, with its vast seething throng of human beings, and the still silence of the prison cell. She had heard, she told the women,—“for these things filter even into prison”— that the Bill had successfully passed its second reading, but she said, and all present knew that she spoke rightly, that if ever the Bill were to become an Act, women must do ten times more yet than they had ever done in the past.

  “I for one, friends,” Mrs. Pankhurst cried, and we knew that she was thinking of the women she had seen in prison, “I for one, looking round on the sweated and decrepit members of my sex, say that men have had control of these things long enough and that no woman with any spark of womanliness in her will consent to allow this state of things to go on any longer. We are tired of it, we want to be of use and to have the power to make the world a better place both for men and women than it is to-day. She paused then and went on to express quietly but with deep feeling her joy in this great woman’s movement that a few years before she had thought she would never live to see. The old cry had been, “You will never rouse women,” but she said, “we have done what they thought, and what they hoped, to be impossible; we women are roused.” At those words they stopped her with their cheers.

  Then Annie Kenney rose to tell the story of her first and only other visit to the Royal Albert Hall, when she had gone there to ask of the newly elected and triumphant Liberal Ministry, a pledge for the enfranchisement of her sex. That night, two years before, she had been received with cries of abuse and howled down by an audience of angry men. “There seemed to be thousands against one,” she said, “but I did not mind because I knew that our action that night was like summer rain on a drooping flower ; it would give new life to the woman’s movement.”

  And now Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, our Treasurer, was to come forward to give yet one more proof that Annie Kenney’s words were true. When the treasurer had imagined that Mrs. Pankhurst’s chair was to be an empty one, she had planned that those present should place in it an offering of money for the cause, but now she would be able to place that offering in the founder’s hands. Towards the sum that was collected there was already the £2,382 11s. 7d, which had been raised by the devotion and sacrifice of members of the Union during the week of self denial; a promise of £1,000 a year till women were enfranchised, from a lady who wished to remain anonymous, and a second £1,000 which Mrs. Lawrence herself, in conjunction with her husband, wished to give. And now it was for the audience to do their part.

  Whilst the treasurer had been speaking, Mr. Lawrence had been arranging a scoring apparatus. Then, one by one, twelve women rose up in the hall and each promised to give £100. Their example was followed by numbers of others. At the same time, promise cards, filled up by members of the audience, were constantly being handed to the platform, where Mrs. Lawrence read them out. At last the sum of £7,000 had been set up, and, with a stirring call from Christabel to work at the by-elections at Peckham and Hastings in which the Union was then engaging, the meeting closed.

  As it was in London, the Peckham election was of course most noticed by the Press and, because it was so near its headquarters, the Women’s Social and Political Union was able to put up the biggest fight there.

  On Peckham Rye, a stretch of common land where hosts of preachers and speakers of all kinds are to be heard on every holiday, each of the parties in the election, including the Suffragettes, began by holding a meeting on the first Sunday of the contest. There was a good deal of rather dangerous horseplay which ominously recalled the Mid-Devon election, the Suffragettes being chief target of the disturbers. But before many days were over the situation had entirely changed. Peckham, as every Londoner knows, is one of that great forest of suburbs of mushroom growth on the south side of the river. Its miles and miles of dingy streets are lined with monotonous rows of ugly little houses which the jerry builder tries to convert into villa residences by disfiguring with heavy over-ornamented stone work and by planting a useless pillar on either side of the narrow doorway. A large proportion of these little dwellings are tenanted by at least two families, and the district is given over to small shopkeepers and clerks, shop assistants, teachers and those who belong more frankly to the working classes. No one who can afford to live elsewhere chooses to live in Peckham; it is full of honest worthy people, but there is nothing romantic or attractive about it.

  The Suffragettes opened their Committee Rooms in the High Street and soon seemed to be everywhere. They were riding up and down on the noisy electric tram cars and dashing along Rye Lane, where the cheap shops are and where on Saturday nights you can buy everything for half the usual price at the costermongers’ stalls, chalking the pavements, giving out handbills, and speaking at the street corners, and soon it was found that these busy, active women had not only converted almost everyone in the district to the justice of their claims, but had captured the heart of the constituency. How had it happened? Partly, it may be, because of the romance and colour that they had brought into the humdrum Peckham life, but perhaps the following impressions of “An Enthusiast” which appeared in the Daily Mail in the midst of the election will best explain the mystery:

  Three happy girls, eyes laughter-lit, breezy, buoyant, joyous, arm in arm, talking like three cascades, are making a royal progress down “the lane that leads to Rye.” Such is the head of the comet. Just a glance at the tail. A heterogeneous nebula of human life — all ranks and ages, both sexes and all professions, following, jostling, bustling, hustling. Miss Christabel Pankhurst shakes herself free from one of her supporters, and takes under her wing a barefoot, ragged urchin, whose eyes are dancing with glee and pride, for his pals are envious. Who is he that that gloved hand should rest caressingly upon his shoulder ? The girl and the gamin trudge along together. “Oh, ain’t she just sweet?” says a factory girl, “and fancy ’er abeen to prison !” “Carn’t she tork — my word ?” chimes in her mate. “Why, she just shut up them blokes as arsked the questions just like a man, she did!”

  Her magnetism lies in her complexity, her bafflingness, her buoyance, her radiant health, her colouring — that of the inside of a seashell. She is so every inch alive — the very exuberance of life, body and mind. Not the racked intensity that comes of nerves high strung and over-active brain, but just that finger-tip aliveness which comes of perfect health and perfect happiness in engrossing occupation.

  This girl orator and organiser, martyr and crusader, holds and sways her crowds by a very network of antithesis, and her rosy face is the index of her complexity. Defiance chases demureness; she flings a madcap word and then lectures you like a schoolmistress.

  On
e moment reticent, grave, and serious, then simmering with mischief, as she lays a Cabinet Minister or a man in the crowd safely upon his back — O rash questioner ! Then her wilfulness — that puckered chin tells a tale — yet her willingness to listen and to learn. Her melting, comprehending sympathy for the sorrowful and heavy-laden — her rapier wit and repartee, but ever smothered in the white sugar of good humour. All these you see — some, when sitting in the background of the trolly, she seeks to hide from the public stare, which she shrinks from with a maiden’s modesty when not actually engaged in speaking — others, when with lissome figure swaying, in rhythmic sympathy with the outpouring words, she fastens her mind and yours upon the point at issue.

  And then her unconscious petulance. That green veil of hers tied under her chin that would for ever get awry. Yes, she is very, very feminine, and that is what will win the vote for women.

  With a voice that never tires (nor ever tires the listener), she is born to charm the ear with an ebb and flow of sweet sound — sound so clear, so silver, so bell-like, now rising, now falling, now rushing and tumultuous, now measured and tempered and austere — earnest and grave — impetuous, a very volley, ardent, burning, scathing, denunciatory — then sinking to appeal to low notes and something near to sadness.