I described the events that marked the first days of our work, the scene in Free Trade Hall, Manchester, when my daughter and her companion were arrested for the crime of asking a question of a politician, and I continued:
‘What did they do next? (I want you to realise that no step we have taken forward has been taken until after some act of repression on the part of our enemy, the Government – because it is the Government that is our enemy; it is not the Members of Parliament, it is not the men in the country; it is the Government in power alone that can give us the vote. It is the Government alone that we regard as our enemy, and the whole of our agitation is directed to bringing just as much pressure as necessary upon those people who can deal with our grievance.) The next step the women took was to ask questions during the course of meetings, because, as I told you, these gentlemen gave them no opportunity of asking them afterwards. And then began the interjections of which we have heard, the interference with the right to hold public meetings, the interference with the right of free speech, of which we have heard, for which these women, these hooligan women, as they have been called – have been denounced. I ask you, gentlemen, to imagine the amount of courage which it needs for a woman to undertake that kind of work. When men come to interrupt women’s meetings, they come in gangs, with noisy instruments, and sing and shout together, and stamp their feet. But when women have gone to Cabinet Ministers’ meetings – only to interrupt Cabinet Ministers and nobody else – they have gone singly. And it has become increasingly difficult for them to get in, because as a result of the women’s methods there has developed the system of admission by ticket and the exclusion of women – a thing which in my Liberal days would have been thought a very disgraceful thing at Liberal meetings. But this ticket system developed, and so the women could only get in with very great difficulty. Women have concealed themselves for thirty-six hours in dangerous positions, under the platforms, in the organs, wherever they could get a vantage point. They waited starving in the cold, sometimes on the roof exposed to a winter’s night, just to get a chance of saying in the course of a Cabinet Minister’s speech, “When is the Liberal Government going to put its promises into practice?” That has been the form militancy took in its further development.’
I went over the whole matter of our peaceful deputations, and of the violence with which they were invariably met; of our arrests and the farcical police court trials, where the mere evidence of policemen’s unsupported statements sent us to prison for long terms; of the falsehoods told of us in the House of Commons by responsible members of the Government – tales of women scratching and biting policemen and using hatpins – and I accused the Government of making these attacks against women who were powerless to defend themselves because they feared the women and desired to crush the agitation represented by our organisation.
‘Now it has been stated in this Court,’ I said, ‘that it is not the Women’s Social and Political Union that is in the Court, but that it is certain defendants. The action of the Government, gentlemen, is certainly against the defendants who are before you here today, but it is also against the Women’s Social and Political Union. The intention is to crush that organisation. And this intention apparently was arrived at after I had been sent to prison for two months for breaking a pane of glass worth, I am told, 2s. 3d., the punishment which I accepted because I was a leader of this movement, though it was an extraordinary punishment to inflict for so small an act of damages as I had committed. I accepted it as the punishment for a leader of an agitation disagreeable to the Government; and while I was there this prosecution started. They thought they would make a clean sweep of the people who they considered were the political brains of the movement. We have got many false friends in the Cabinet – people who by their words appear to be well-meaning towards the cause of Women’s Suffrage. And they thought that if they could get the leaders of the Union out of the way, it would result in the indefinite postponement and settlement of the question in this country. Well, they have not succeeded in their design, and even if they had got all the so-called leaders of this movement out of their way they would not have succeeded even then. Now why have they not put the Union in the dock? We have a democratic Government, so-called. This Women’s Social and Political Union is not a collection of hysterical and unimportant wild women, as has been suggested to you, but it is an important organisation, which numbers amongst its membership very important people. It is composed of women of all classes of the community, women who have influence in their particular organisations as working women; women who have influence in professional organisations as professional women; women of social importance; women even of Royal rank are amongst the members of this organisation, and so it would not pay a democratic Government to deal with this organisation as a whole.
‘They hoped that by taking away the people that they thought guided the political fortunes of the organisation they would break the organisation down. They thought that if they put out of the way the influential members of the organisation they, as one member of the Cabinet, I believe, said, would crush the movement and get it “on the run”. Well, Governments have many times been mistaken, gentlemen, and I venture to suggest to you that Governments are mistaken again. I think the answer to the Government was given at the Albert Hall meeting held immediately after our arrest. Within a few minutes, without the eloquence of Mrs Pethick Lawrence, without the appeals of the people who have been called the leaders of this movement, in a very few minutes £10,000 was subscribed for the carrying on of this movement.
‘Now a movement like that, supported like that, is not a wild, hysterical movement. It is not a movement of misguided people. It is a very serious movement. Women, I submit, like our members, and women, I venture to say, like the two women, and like the man who are in the dock today, are not people to undertake a thing like this lightly. May I just try to make you feel what it is that has made this movement the gigantic size it is from the very small beginnings it had? It is one of the biggest movements of modern times. A movement which is not only an influence, perhaps not yet recognised, in this country, but is influencing the women’s movement all over the world. Is there anything more marvellous in modern times than the kind of spontaneous outburst in every country of this woman’s movement? Even in China – and I think it somewhat of a disgrace to Englishmen – even in China women have won the vote, as an outcome of a successful revolution, with which, I dare say, members of his Majesty’s Government sympathise – a bloody revolution.
‘One more word on that point. When I was in prison the second time, for three months as a common criminal for no greater offence than the issue of a handbill – less inflammatory in its terms than some of the speeches of members of the Government who prosecute us here – during that time, through the efforts of a member of Parliament, there was secured for me permission to have the daily paper in prison, and the first thing I read in the daily Press was this: that the Government was at that moment fêting the members of the Young Turkish Revolutionary Party, gentlemen who had invaded the privacy of the Sultan’s home – we used to hear a great deal about invading the privacy of Mr Asquith’s residence when we ventured to ring his doorbell – gentlemen who had killed and slain, and had been successful in their revolution, while we women had never thrown a stone – for none of us was imprisoned for stone throwing, but merely for taking the part we had then taken in this organisation. There we were imprisoned while these political murderers were being fêted by the very Government who imprisoned us, and were being congratulated on the success of their revolution. Now I ask you, was it to be wondered at that women said to themselves: “Perhaps it is that we have not done enough. Perhaps it is that these gentlemen do not understand womenfolk. Perhaps they do not realise women’s ways, and because we have not done the things that men have done, they may think we are not in earnest.”
‘And then we come down to this last business of all, when we have responsible statesmen like Mr Hobhouse saying that there
had never been any sentimental uprising, no expression of feeling like that which led to the burning down of Nottingham Castle. Can you wonder, then, that we decided we should have to nerve ourselves to do more, and can you understand why we cast about to find a way, as women will, that would not involve loss of human life and the maiming of human beings, because women care more about human life than men, and I think it is quite natural that we should, for we know what life costs. We risk our lives when men are born. Now, I want to say this deliberately as a leader of this movement. We have tried to hold it back, we have tried to keep it from going beyond bounds, and I have never felt a prouder woman than I did one night when a police constable said to me, after one of these demonstrations, “Had this been a man’s demonstration, there would have been bloodshed long ago.” Well, my lord, there has not been any bloodshed except on the part of the women themselves – these so-called militant women. Violence has been done to us, and I who stand before you in this dock have lost a dear sister in the course of this agitation. She died within three days of coming out of prison, a little more than a year ago. These are things which, wherever we are, we do not say very much about. We cannot keep cheery, we cannot keep cheerful, we cannot keep the right kind of spirit, which means success, if we dwell too much upon the hard part of our agitation. But I do say this, gentlemen, that whatever in future you may think of us, you will say this about us, that whatever our enemies may say, we have always put up an honourable fight, and taken no unfair means of defeating our opponents, although they have not always been people who have acted so honourably towards us.
‘We have assaulted no one; we have done no hurt to anyone; and it was not until “Black Friday” – and what happened on “Black Friday” is that we had a new Home Secretary, and there appeared to be new orders given to the police, because the police on that occasion showed a kind of ferocity in dealing with the women that they had never done before, and the women came to us and said: “We cannot bear this” – it was not until then we felt this new form of repression should compel us to take another step. That is the question of “Black Friday”, and I want to say here and now that every effort was made after “Black Friday” to get an open public judicial inquiry into the doings of “Black Friday”, as to the instructions given to the police. That inquiry was refused; but an informal inquiry was held by a man, whose name will carry conviction as to his status and moral integrity on the one side of the great political parties, and a man of equal standing on the Liberal side. These two men were Lord Robert Cecil and Mr Ellis Griffith. They held a private inquiry, had women before them, took their evidence, examined that evidence, and after hearing it said that they believed what the women had told them was substantially true, and that they thought there was good cause for that inquiry to be held. That was embodied in a report. To show you our difficulties, Lord Robert Cecil, in a speech at the Criterion Restaurant, spoke on this question. He called upon the Government to hold this inquiry, and not one word of that speech was reported in any morning paper. That is the sort of thing we have had to face, and I welcome standing here, if only for the purpose of getting these facts out, and I challenge the Attorney General to institute an inquiry into these proceedings – not that kind of inquiry of sending their inspectors to Holloway and accepting what they are told by the officials – but to open a public inquiry, with a jury, if he likes, to deal with our grievances against the Government and the methods of this agitation.
‘I say it is not the defendants who have conspired, but the Government who have conspired against us to crush this agitation; but however the matter may be decided, we are content to abide by the verdict of posterity. We are not the kind of people who like to brag a lot; we are not the kind of people who would bring ourselves into this position unless we were convinced that it was the only way. I have tried – all my life I have worked for this question – I have tried arguments, I have tried persuasion. I have addressed a greater number of public meetings, perhaps, than any person in this court, and I have never addressed one meeting where substantially the opinion of the meeting – not a ticket meeting, but an open meeting, for I have never addressed any other kind of a meeting – has not been that where women bear burdens and share responsibilities like men they should be given the privileges that men enjoy. I am convinced that public opinion is with us – that it has been stifled – wilfully stifled – so that in a public Court of Justice one is glad of being allowed to speak on this question.’
The Attorney General’s summing up for the prosecution was very largely a defence of the Liberal Party and its course in regard to woman suffrage legislation. Therefore, Mr Tim Healey, in his defence of Mrs Pethick Lawrence, did well to lay stress on the political character of the conspiracy charge and trial. He said:
‘It is no doubt a very useful thing when you have political opponents to be able to set the law in motion against them. I have not the smallest doubt it would be a very convenient thing, if they had the courage to do it, to shut up the whole of His Majesty’s Opposition while the present Government is in office – to lock up all the men of lustre and distinction in our public forum and on our public platforms – all the Carsons, F.E. Smiths, Bonar Laws, and so on. It would be a most convenient thing to end the whole thing, as it would be to end women’s agitation in the form of the indictment. Gentlemen of the jury, whatever words have been spoken by mutual opponents, whatever instructions have been addressed, not to feeble females, but to men who boast of drilling and of arms, they have not had the courage to prosecute anybody, except women, by means of an indictment. Yet the Government of my learned friend have selected two dates as cardinal dates, and they ask you to pass judgment upon the prisoners at the bar, and to say that, without rhyme or reason, taking the course suggested without provocation, these responsible, well-bred, educated, University people, have suddenly, in the words of the indictment, wickedly and with malice aforethought engaged in these criminal designs.
‘Gentlemen of the jury, the first thing I would ask in that connection is this: What is there in the course of this demand put forward by women which should have excited the treatment at the hands of His Majesty’s Ministers which this movement, according to the documents which are in evidence before me, has received? I should suppose that the essence of all government is the smooth conduct of affairs, so that those who enjoy high station, great emoluments, should not be parties against whom the accusation of provoking civic strife and breeding public turmoil should be brought. What do we find? We find that, in regard to the treatment of the demand which had always been put forward humbly, respectably, respectfully, in its origin, by those who have received trade unionists, anti-vaccinators, deceased wife’s sisters, and all other forms of political demand, and who have received them humbly and yielded to them, we find that when these people advocating this particular form of civic reform request an audience, request admission, request even to have their petitions respectfully received, they have met, judicially, at all events, with a flat and solemn negative. That is the beginning of this unhappy spirit bred in the minds of persons like the defendants, persons like those against whom evidence has been tendered – which has led to your being empanelled in that box today. And I put it to you when you are considering whether it is the incitement of my clients or the conduct of Ministers that have led to these events – whether I cannot ask you to say that even a fair apportionment of blame should not rest upon more responsible shoulders, and whether you should go out of your way to say that these persons in the dock alone are guilty.’
In closing Mr Healey reverted to the political character of the trial. ‘The Government have undertaken this prosecution,’ he declared, ‘to seclude for a considerable period their chief opponents. They hope there will be at public meetings which they attend no more inconvenient cries of “Votes for Women”. I cannot conceive any other object which they could have in bringing the prosecution. I have expressed my regret at the loss which the shopkeepers, tradesmen and others have suffered. I
regret it deeply. I regret that any person should bring loss or suffering upon innocent people. But I ask you to say that the law has already been sufficiently vindicated by the punishment of the immediate authors of the deed. What can be gained? Does justice gain?
‘I almost hesitate to treat this as a legal inquiry. I regard it as a vindictive political act. Of all the astonishing acts that have ever been brought into a public court against a prisoner I cannot help feeling the charge against Mr Pethick Lawrence is the most astonishing. He ventured to attend at some police courts and gave bail for women who had been arrested in endeavouring, as I understand, to present petitions to Parliament or to have resort to violence. I do not complain of the way in which my learned friend has conducted the prosecution, but I do complain of the police methods – enquiring into the homes and the domestic circumstances of the prisoners, obtaining their papers, taking their newspaper, going into their banking account, bringing up their bankers here to say what is their balance; and I do say that in none of the prosecutions of the past have similar methods belittled a great State trial, because, look at it as you will, you cannot get away from it that this is a great State trial. It is not the women who are on trial. It is the men. It is the system of Government which is upon its trial. It is this method of rolling the dice by fifty-four counts in an indictment without showing to what any bit of evidence is fairly attributable; the system is on its trial – a system whereby every innocent act in public life is sought to be enmeshed in a conspiracy.’
The jury was absent for more than an hour, showing that they had some difficulty in agreeing upon a verdict. When they returned it was plain from their strained countenances that they were labouring under deep feeling. The foreman’s voice shook as he pronounced the verdict, guilty as charged, and he had hard work to control his emotion as he added: ‘Your Lordship, we unanimously desire to express the hope that, taking into consideration the undoubtedly pure motives that underlie the agitation that has led to this trouble, you will be pleased to exercise the utmost clemency and leniency in dealing with the case.’
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