Christabel had gone home, and at first, on hearing of the arrest of Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence, had taken her own arrest for granted. A little reflection however showed her the danger in which the Union would stand if completely deprived of its accustomed leadership, and seeing that it was her duty to avoid arrest, she quietly left the house. She spent that night with friends who, next morning, helped her to make the necessary arrangements and saw her safely away from London. The same night she reached Paris, where she has since remained. My relief, when I learned of her flight, was very great, because I knew that whatever happened to the Lawrences and myself, the movement would be wisely directed, this in spite of the fact that the police remained in full possession of headquarters.
The offices in Clement’s Inn were thoroughly ransacked by the police, in a determined effort to secure evidence of conspiracy. They went through every desk, file and cabinet, taking away with them two cab-loads of books and papers, including all my private papers, photographs of my children in infancy, and letters sent me by my husband long ago. Some of these I never saw again.
The police also terrorised the printer of our weekly newspaper, and although the paper came out as usual, about a third of its columns were left blank. The headlines, however, with the ensuing space mere white paper produced a most dramatic effect. ‘History Teaches’ read one headline to a blank space, plainly indicating that the Government were not willing to let the public know some of the things that history teaches. ‘Women’s Moderation’ suggested that the destroyed paragraph called for comparison of the women’s window breaking with men’s greater violence in the past. Most eloquent of all was the editorial page, absolutely blank except for the headline, ‘A Challenge!’ and the name at the foot of the last column, Christabel Pankhurst. What words could have breathed a prouder defiance, a more implacable resolve? Christabel was gone, out of the clutches of the Government, yet she remained in complete possession of the field. For weeks the search for her went relentlessly on. Police searched every railway station, every train, every sea port. The police of every city in the Kingdom were furnished with her portrait. Every amateur Sherlock Holmes in England joined with the police in finding her. She was reported in a dozen cities, including New York. But all the time she was living quietly in Paris, in daily communication with the workers in London, who within a few days were once more at their appointed tasks. My daughter has remained in France ever since.
Meanwhile, I found myself in the anomalous position of a convicted offender serving two months’ prison sentence, and of a prisoner on remand waiting to be charged with a more serious offence. I was in very bad health, having been placed in a damp and unwarmed third division cell, the result being an acute attack of bronchitis. I addressed a letter to the Home Secretary, telling him of my condition, and urging the necessity of liberty to recover my health and to prepare my case for trial. I asked for release on bail, the plain right of a remand prisoner, and I offered if bail were granted now to serve the rest of my two months’ sentence later on. The sole concessions granted me, however, were removal to a better cell and the right to see my secretary and my solicitor, but only in the presence of a wardress and a member of the prison clerical staff. On 14th March Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence, Mrs Tuke and myself were brought up for preliminary hearing on the charge of having, on 1st November 1911, and on various other dates, ‘conspired and combined together unlawfully and maliciously to commit damage, etc.’ The case opened on 14th March in a crowded courtroom in which I saw many friends. Mr Bodkin, who appeared for the prosecution, made a very long address, in which he endeavoured to prove that the Women’s Social and Political Union was a highly developed organisation of most sinister character. He produced much documentary evidence, some of it of such amusing character that the court rocked with stifled laughter, and the judge was obliged to conceal his smiles behind his hand. Mr Bodkin cited our code book with the assistance of which we were able to communicate private messages. His voice sank to a scandalised half whisper as he stated the fact that we had presumed to include the sacred persons of the Government in our private code. ‘We find,’ said Mr Bodkin portentously, ‘that public men in the service of His Majesty as members of the Cabinet are tabulated here under code names. We find that the Cabinet collectively has its code word “Trees”, and individual members of the Cabinet are designated by the name, sometimes of trees, but I am also bound to say the commonest weeds as well.’ Here a ripple of laughter interrupted. Mr Bodkin frowned heavily, and continued: ‘There is one,’ he said solemnly, ‘called Pansy; another one – more complimentary – Roses, another, Violets, and so on. Each of the defendants was designated by a code letter. Thus Mrs Pankhurst was identified by the letter F; Mrs Pethick Lawrence, D; Miss Christabel Pankhurst, E. Every public building, including the House of Commons, had its code name. The deadly possibilities of the code were illustrated by a telegram found in one of the files. It read: “Silk, thistle, pansy, duck, wool, E. Q.” Translated by the aid of the code book the telegram read: “Will you protest Asquith’s public meeting tomorrow evening but don’t get arrested unless success depends on it. Wire back to Christabel Pankhurst, Clements Inn.”’
More laughter followed these revelations, which after all proved no more than the business-like methods employed by the W.S.P.U. The laughter proved something a great deal more significant, for it was a plain indication that the old respect in which Cabinet Ministers had been held was no more. We had torn the veil from their sacrosanct personalities and shown them for what they were, mean and scheming politicians. More serious from the point of view of prosecution was the evidence brought in by members of the police department in regard to the occurrences of 1st and 4th March. The policemen who arrested me and my two companions in Downing Street on 1st March, after we had broken the windows in the Premier’s house, testified that following the arrest, we had handed him our reserve stock of stones, and that they were all alike, heavy flints. Other prisoners were found in possession of similar stones, tending to prove that the stones all came from one source. Other officers testified to the methodical manner in which the window breaking of 1st and 4th March was carried out, how systematically it had been planned and how soldierly had been the behaviour of the women. By twos and threes on 4th March they had been seen to go to the headquarters at Clement’s Inn, carrying handbags, which they deposited at headquarters, and had then gone on to a meeting at the Pavilion Music Hall. The police attended the meeting, which was the usual rally preceding a demonstration or a deputation. At five o’clock the meeting adjourned and the women went out, as if to go home. The police observed that many of them, still in groups of twos and threes, went to the Gardenia restaurant in Catherine Street, Strand, a place where many Suffragette breakfasts and teas had been held. The police thought that about one hundred and fifty women congregated there on 4th March. They remained until seven o’clock, and then, under the watching eyes of the police, they sauntered out and dispersed. A few minutes later, when there was no reason to expect such a thing, the noise was heard, in many streets, of wholesale window smashing. The police authorities made much of the fact that the women who had left their bags at headquarters and were afterwards arrested, were bailed out that night by Mr Pethick Lawrence. The similarity of the stones used; the gathering of so many women in one building, prepared for arrest; the waiting at the Gardenia Restaurant; the apparent dispersal; the simultaneous destruction in many localities of plate glass, and the bailing of prisoners by a person connected with the headquarters mentioned, certainly showed a carefully worked out plan. Only a public trial of the defendants could establish whether or not the plan was a conspiracy.
On the second day of the Ministerial hearing, Mrs Tuke, who had been in the prison infirmary for twenty days and had to be attended in court by a trained nurse, was admitted to bail. Mr Pethick Lawrence made a strong plea for bail for himself and his wife, pointing out that they had been in prison on remand for two weeks and were entitled to bail. I also demande
d the privileges of a prisoner on remand. Both of these pleas were denied by the court, but a few days later the Home Secretary wrote to my solicitor that the remainder of my sentence of two months would be remitted until after the conspiracy trial at Bow Street. Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence had already been admitted to bail. Public opinion forced the Home Secretary to make these concessions, as it is well known that it is next to impossible to prepare a defence while confined in prison. Aside from the terrible effect of prison on one’s body and nerves, there is the difficulty of consulting documents and securing other necessary data to be considered.
On 4th April the Ministerial hearing ended in the acquittal of Mrs Tuke, whose activities in the W.S.P.U. were shown to be purely secretarial. Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence and myself were committed for trial at the next session of the Central Criminal Court, beginning 23rd April. Because of the weak state of my health the judge was with great difficulty prevailed upon to postpone the trial two weeks and it was, therefore, not until 15th May that the case was opened.
The trial at Old Bailey is a thing that I shall never forget. The scene is clear before me as I write, the judge impressively bewigged and scarlet robed, dominating the crowded courtroom, the solicitors at their table, the jury, and looking very far away, the anxious pale faces of our friends who crowded the narrow galleries.
By the veriest irony of fate this judge, Lord Coleridge, was the son of Sir Charles Coleridge who, in the year 1867, appeared with my husband, Dr Pankhurst, in the famous case of Chorlton v. Lings, and sought to establish that women were persons, and as such were entitled to the Parliamentary vote. To make the irony still deeper the Attorney General, Sir Rufus Isaacs, who appeared as Counsel for the prosecution against women militants, himself had been guilty of remarkable speeches in corroboration of our point of view. In a speech made in 1910, in relation to the abolition of the Lords’ veto, Sir Rufus made the statement that, although the agitation against privilege was being peacefully conducted, the indignation behind it was very intense. Said Sir Rufus: ‘Formerly when the great mass of the people were voteless they had to do something violent in order to show what they felt; today the elector’s bullet is his ballot. Let no one be deceived, therefore, because in this present struggle everything is peaceful and orderly, in contrast to the disorderliness of other great struggles of the past.’ We wondered if the man who said these words could fail to realise that voteless women, deprived of every constitutional means of righting their grievances, were also obliged to do something violent in order to show how they felt. His opening address removed all doubt on that score.
Sir Rufus Isaacs has a clear-cut, hawk-like face, deep eyes, and a somewhat world worn air. The first words he spoke were so astoundingly unfair that I could hardly believe that I heard them aright. He began his address to the jury by telling them that they must not, on any account, connect the act of the defendants with any political agitation.
‘I am very anxious to impress upon you,’ he said, ‘from the moment we begin to deal with the facts of this case, that all questions of whether a woman is entitled to the Parliamentary franchise, whether she should have the same right of franchise as a man, are questions which are in no sense involved in the trial of this issue… Therefore, I ask you to discard altogether from the consideration of the matters which will be placed before you any viewpoint you may have on this no doubt very important political issue.’
Nevertheless Sir Rufus added in the course of his remarks that he feared that it would not be possible to keep out of the conduct of the case various references to political events, and of course the entire trial, from beginning to end, showed clearly that the case was what Mr Tim Healey, Mrs Pethick Lawrence’s counsel, called it, a great State Trial.
Proceeding, the Attorney General described the W.S.P.U., which he said he thought had been in existence since 1907, and had used what were known as militant methods. In 1911 the association had become annoyed by the Prime Minister because he would not make women’s suffrage what was called a Government question. In November 1911, the Prime Minister announced the introduction of a manhood suffrage bill. From that time on the defendants set to work to carry out a campaign which would have meant nothing less than anarchy. Women were to be induced to act together at a given time, in different given places, in such numbers that the police should be paralysed by the number of persons breaking the law, in order, to use the defendant’s own words, ‘to bring the Government to its knees’.
After designating the respective positions held by the four defendants in the W.S.P.U., Sir Rufus went on to relate the events which resulted in the smashing of plate glass windows valued at some 2,000 pounds, and the imprisonment of over 200 women who were incited to their deeds by the conspirators in the dock. He entirely ignored the motive of the acts in question, and he treated the whole affair as if the women had been burglars. This inverted statement of the matter, though accurate enough as to facts, was such as might have been given by King John of the signing of Magna Carta.
A very great number of witnesses were examined, a large number of them being policemen, and their testimony, and our cross examination disclosed the startling fact that there exists in England a special band of secret police entirely engaged in political work. These men, seventy-five in number, form what is known as the political branch of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Police. They go about in disguise, and their sole duty is to shadow Suffragettes and other political workers. They follow certain political workers from their homes to their places of business, to their social pleasures, into tea rooms and restaurants, even to the theatre. They pursue unsuspecting people in taxicabs, sit beside them in omnibuses. Above all they take down speeches. In fact the system is exactly like the secret police system of Russia.
Mr Pethick Lawrence and I spoke in our own defence, and Mr Healey M.P. defended Mrs Pethick Lawrence. I cannot give our speeches in full, but I should like to include as much of them as will serve to make the entire situation clear to the reader.
Mr Lawrence spoke first at the opening of the case. He began by giving an account of the suffrage movement and why he felt the enfranchisement of women appeared to him a question so grave that it warranted strong measures in its pursuit. He sketched briefly the history of the Women’s Social and Political Union, from the time when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were thrown out of Sir Edward Grey’s meeting and imprisoned for asking a political question, to the torpedoing of the Conciliation Bill. ‘The case that I have to put before you,’ he said, ‘is that neither the conspiracy nor the incitement is ours; but that the conspiracy is a conspiracy of the Cabinet who are responsible for the Government of this country; and that the incitement is the incitement of the Ministers of the Crown.’ And he did this most effectually not only by telling of the disgraceful trickery and deceit with which the Government had misled the suffragists in the matter of suffrage bills, but by giving the plain words in which members of the Cabinet had advised the women that they would never get the vote until they had learned to fight for it as men had fought in the past.
When it came my turn to speak, realising that the average man is profoundly ignorant of the history of the women’s movement – because the press has never adequately or truthfully chronicled the movement – I told the jury, as briefly as I could, the story of the forty years’ peaceful agitation before my daughters and I resolved that we would give our lives to the work of getting the vote for women, and that we should use whatever means of getting the vote that were necessary to success.
‘We founded the Women’s Social and Political Union,’ I said, ‘in 1903. Our first intention was to try and influence the particular political Party, which was then coming into power, to make this question of the enfranchisement of women their own question and to push it. It took some little time to convince us – and I need not weary you with the history of all that has happened – but it took some little time to convince us that that was no use; that we could not secure things in that w
ay. Then in 1905 we faced the hard facts. We realised that there was a Press boycott against Women’s Suffrage. Our speeches at public meetings were not reported, our letters to the editors were not published, even if we implored the editors; even the things relating to Women’s Suffrage in Parliament were not recorded. They said the subject was not of sufficient public interest to be reported in the Press, and they were not prepared to report it. Then with regard to the men politicians in 1905: we realised how shadowy were the fine phrases about democracy, about human equality, used by the gentlemen who were then coming into power. They meant to ignore the women – there was no doubt whatever about that. For in the official documents coming from the Liberal party on the eve of the 1905 election, there were sentences like this: ‘What the country wants is a simple measure of Manhood Suffrage.’ There was no room for the inclusion of women. We knew perfectly well that if there was to be franchise reform at all, the Liberal party which was then coming into power did not mean Votes for Women, in spite of all the pledges of members; in spite of the fact that a majority of the House of Commons, especially on the Liberal side, were pledged to it – it did not mean that they were going to put it into practice. And so we found some way of forcing their attention to this question.
‘Now I come to the facts with regard to militancy. We realised that the plans we had in our minds would involve great sacrifice on our part, that it might cost us all we had. We were at that time a little organisation, composed in the main of working women, the wives and daughters of working men. And my daughters and I took a leading part, naturally, because we thought the thing out, and, to a certain extent, because we were of better social position than most of our members, and we felt a sense of responsibility.’
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