CHAPTER I

Parliament had reassembled on October 25th, 1911, and the first move on

the part of the Government was, to say the least of it, rather

unpropitious. The Prime Minister submitted two motions, the first one

empowering them to take all the time of the House during the remainder

of the session, and the second guillotining discussion on the Insurance

Bill so as to force the measure through before Christmas. One day only

was allotted to the clauses relating to women in that bill. These

clauses were notoriously unfair; they provided for sickness insurance of

about four million women and unemployment insurance of no women at all.

Under the provision of the bill eleven million men were ensured against

sickness and about two and a half million against unemployment. Women

were given lower benefits for the same premium as men, and premiums paid

out of the family income were credited solely to the men's account. The

bill as drafted provided no form of insurance for wives, mothers and

daughters who spent their lives at home working for the family. It

penalised women for staying in the home, which most men agree is women's

only legitimate sphere of action. The amended bill grudgingly allowed

aside from maternity benefits, a small insurance, on rather difficult

terms, for workingmen's wives.

Thus the re-elected Government's first utterance to women was one of

contempt; and this was followed, on November 7th, by the almost

incredible announcement that the Government intended, at the next

session, to introduce a manhood suffrage bill. This announcement was not

made in the House of Commons, but to a deputation of men from the

People's Suffrage Federation, a small group of people who advocated

universal adult suffrage. The deputation, which was very privately

arranged for, was received by Mr. Asquith, and the then Master of

Elibank (Chief Liberal Whip). The spokesman asked Mr. Asquith to bring

in a Government measure for universal adult suffrage, including adult

women. The Prime Minister replied that the Government had pledged

facilities for the Conciliation Bill, which was as far as they were

prepared to go in the matter of women's suffrage. But, he added, the

Government intended in the next session to introduce and to pass through

all its stages a genuine reform bill which would sweep away existing

qualifications for the franchise, and substitute a single qualification

of residence. The bill would apply to adult males only, but it would be

so framed as to be open to a woman suffrage amendment in case the House

of Commons desired to make that extension and amendment.

This portentous announcement came like a bolt from the blue, and there

was strong condemnation of the Government's treachery to women. Said the

_Saturday Review_:

With absolutely no demand, no ghost of a demand, for more votes

for men, and with--beyond all cavil--a very strong demand for votes

for women, the Government announce their Manhood Suffrage Bill and

carefully evade the other question! For a naked, avowed plan of

gerrymandering no Government surely ever did beat this one.

The _Daily Mail_ said that the "policy which Mr. Asquith proposes is

absolutely indefensible." And the _Evening Standard and Globe_ said: "We

are no friends of female suffrage, but anything more contemptible than

the attitude assumed by the Government it is difficult to imagine."

If the Government hoped to deceive any one by their dishonest reference

to the possibility of a woman suffrage amendment, they were

disappointed. Said the _Evening News_:

Mr. Asquith's bombshell will blow the Conciliation Bill to

smithereens, for it is impossible to have a manhood suffrage for

men and a property qualification for women. True, the Premier

consents to leave the question of women's suffrage to the House,

but he knows well enough what the decision of the House will be.

The Conciliation Bill had a chance, but the larger measure has none

at all.

I have quoted these newspaper leaders to show you that our opinion of

the Government's action was shared even by the press. Universal suffrage

in a country where women are in a majority of one million is not likely

to happen in the lifetime of any reader of this volume, and the

Government's generous offer of a possible amendment was nothing more

than a gratuitous insult to the suffragists.

The truce, naturally, came to an abrupt end. The W. S. P. U. wrote to

the Prime Minister, saying that consternation had been aroused by the

Government's announcement, and that it had been decided accordingly to

send a deputation representing the Women's Social and Political Union to

wait upon himself and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the evening of

November 21st. The purpose of the deputation was to demand that the

proposed manhood suffrage bill be abandoned, and that in its place

should be introduced a Government measure giving equal franchise rights

to men and women. A similar letter was despatched to Mr. Lloyd-George.

Six times before on occasions of crisis had the W. S. P. U. requested an

interview with Mr. Asquith, and each time they had been refused. This

time the Prime Minister replied that he had decided to receive a

deputation of the various suffrage societies on November 17th,

"including your own society, if you desire it." It was proposed that

each society appoint four representatives as members of the deputation

which would be received by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the

Exchequer.

Nine suffrage societies sent representatives to the meeting, our own

representatives being Christabel Pankhurst, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Miss

Annie Kenney, Lady Constance Lytton and Miss Elizabeth Robins.

Christabel and Mrs. Lawrence spoke for the Union, and they did not

hesitate to accuse the two Ministers to their faces of having grossly

tricked and falsely misled women. Mr. Asquith, in his reply to the

deputation, resented these imputations.

He had kept his pledge, he insisted, in regard to the Conciliation

Bill. He was perfectly willing to give facilities to the Bill, if the

women preferred that to an amendment to his reform bill. Moreover, he

denied that he had made any new announcement. As far back as 1908 he had

distinctly declared that the Government regarded it as a sacred duty to

bring forward a manhood suffrage bill before that Parliament came to an

end. It was true that the Government did not carry out that binding

obligation, and it was also true that until the present time nothing

more was ever said about a manhood suffrage bill, but that was not the

Government's fault. The crisis of the Lord's veto, had momentarily

displaced the bill. Now he merely proposed to fulfil his promise made in

1908, and also his promise about giving facilities to the Conciliation

Bill. He was ready to keep both promises. Well he knew that those

promises were incompatible, that the fulfilment of both was therefore

impossible, and Christabel told him so bluntly and fearlessly. "We are

not satisfied," she warned him, and the Prime Minister said acidly: "I

did not expect to satisfy _you_."

The reply of the W. S. P. U. was immediate and forceful. Led by Mrs.

Pethick Lawrence, our women went out with stones and hammers and broke

hundreds of windows in the Home Office, the War and Foreign Offices, the

Board of Education, the Privy Council Office, the Board of Trade, the

Treasury, Somerset House, the National Liberal Club, several post

offices, the Old Banqueting Hall, the London and South Western Bank, and

a dozen other buildings, including the residence of Lord Haldane and

Mr. John Burns. Two hundred and twenty women were arrested and about 150

of them sent to prison for terms varying from a week to two months.

One individual protest deserves mention because of its prophetic

character. In December Miss Emily Wilding Davison was arrested for

attempting to set fire to a letter box at Parliament Street Post Office.

In court Miss Davison said that she did it as a protest against the

Government's treachery, and as a demand that women's suffrage be

included in the King's speech. "The protest was meant to be serious,"

she said, "and so I adopted a serious course. In past agitation for

reform the next step after window-breaking was incendiarism, in order to

draw the attention of the private citizens to the fact that this

question of reform was their concern as well as that of women."

Miss Davison received the severe sentence of six months' imprisonment

for her deed.

To this state of affairs I returned from my American tour. I had the

comfort of reflecting that my imprisoned comrades were being accorded

better treatment than the early prisoners had known. Since early in 1910

some concessions had been granted, and some acknowledgment of the

political character of our offences had been made. During the brief

period when these scant concessions to justice were allowed, the hunger

strike was abandoned and prison was robbed of its worst horror, forcible

feeding. The situation was bad enough, however, and I could see that it

might easily become a great deal worse. We had reached a stage at which

the mere sympathy of members of Parliament, however sincerely felt, was

no longer of the slightest use. Reminding our members this, in the first

speeches made after returning to England I asked them to prepare

themselves for more action. If women's suffrage was not included in the

next King's speech we should have to make it absolutely impossible for

the Government to touch the question of the franchise.

The King's speech, when Parliament met in February, 1912, alluded to the

franchise question in very general terms. Proposals, it was stated,

would be brought forward for the amendment of the law with respect to

the franchise and the registration of electors. This might be construed

to mean that the Government were going to introduce a manhood suffrage

bill or a bill for the abolition of plural voting, which had been

suggested in some quarters as a substitute for the manhood suffrage

bill. No precise statement of the Government's intentions was made, and

the whole franchise question was left in a cloud of uncertainty. Mr. Agg

Gardner, a Unionist member of the Conciliation Committee, drew the third

place in the ballot, and he announced that he should reintroduce the

Conciliation Bill. This interested us very slightly, for knowing its

prospect of success to have been destroyed, for we were done with the

Conciliation Bill forever. Nothing less than a Government measure would

henceforth satisfy the W. S. P. U., because it had been clearly

demonstrated that only a Government measure would be allowed to pass the

House of Commons. With sublime faith, or rather with a deplorable lack

of political insight, the Women's Liberal Federation and the National

Union of Women's Suffrage Societies professed full confidence in the

proposed amendment to a manhood suffrage bill, but we knew how futile

was that hope. We saw that the only course to take was to offer

determined opposition to any measure of suffrage that did not include as

an integral part, equal suffrage for men and women.

On February 16th we held a large meeting of welcome to a number of

released prisoners who had served two and three months for the window

breaking demonstration that had taken place in the previous November. At

this meeting we candidly surveyed the situation and agreed on a course

of action which we believed would be sufficiently strong to prevent the

Government from advancing their threatened franchise bill. I said on

this occasion:

"We don't want to use any weapons that are unnecessarily strong. If the

argument of the stone, that time-honoured official political argument,

is sufficient, then we will never use any stronger argument. And that is

the weapon and the argument that we are going to use next time. And so I

say to every volunteer on our demonstration, 'Be prepared to use that

argument.' I am taking charge of the demonstration, and that is the

argument I am going to use. I am not going to use it for any sentimental

reason, I am going to use it because it is the easiest and the most

readily understood. Why should women go to Parliament Square and be

battered about and insulted, and most important of all, produce less

effect than when we throw stones? We tried it long enough. We submitted

for years patiently to insult and assault. Women had their health

injured. Women lost their lives. We should not have minded if that had

succeeded, but that did not succeed, and we have made more progress with

less hurt to ourselves by breaking glass than ever we made when we

allowed them to break our bodies.

"After all, is not a woman's life, is not her health, are not her limbs

more valuable than panes of glass? There is no doubt of that, but most

important of all, does not the breaking of glass produce more effect

upon the Government? If you are fighting a battle, that should dictate

your choice of weapons. Well, then, we are going to try this time if

mere stones will do it. I do not think it will ever be necessary for us

to arm ourselves as Chinese women have done, but there are women who are

prepared to do that if it should be necessary. In this Union we don't

lose our heads. We only go as far as we are obliged to go in order to

win, and we are going forward with this next protest demonstration in

full faith that this plan of campaign, initiated by our friends whom we

honour to-night, will on this next occasion prove effective."

Ever since militancy took on the form of destruction of property the

public generally, both at home and abroad, has expressed curiosity as to

the logical connection between acts such as breaking windows, firing

pillar boxes, et cetera, and the vote. Only a complete lack of

historical knowledge excuses that curiosity. For every advance of men's

political freedom has been marked with violence and the destruction of

property. Usually the advance has been marked by war, which is called

glorious. Sometimes it has been marked by riotings, which are deemed

less glorious but are at least effective. That speech of mine, just

quoted, will probably strike the reader as one inciting to violence and

illegal action, things as a rule and in ordinary circumstances quite

inexcusable. Well, I will call the reader's attention to what was, in

this connection, a rather singular coincidence. At the very hour when I

was making that speech, advising my audience of the political necessity

of physical revolt, a responsible member of the Government, in another

hall, in another city, was telling his audience precisely the same

thing. This Cabinet Minister, the right Honourable C. E. H. Hobhouse,

addressing a large anti-suffrage meeting in his constituency of Bristol,

said that the suffrage movement was not a political issue because its

adherents had failed to prove that behind this movement existed a large

public demand. He declared that "In the case of the suffrage demand

there has not been the kind of popular sentimental uprising which

accounted for Nottingham Castle in 1832 or the Hyde Park railings in

1867. There has not been a great ebullition of popular feeling."

The "popular sentimental uprising" to which Mr. Hobhouse alluded was the

burning to the ground of the castle of the anti-suffrage Duke of

Newcastle, and of Colwick Castle, the country seat of another of the

leaders of the opposition against the franchise bill. The militant men

of that time did not select uninhabited buildings to be fired. They

burned both these historic residences over their owners' heads. Indeed,

the wife of the owner of Colwick Castle died as a result of shock and

exposure on that occasion. No arrests were made, no men imprisoned. On

the contrary the King sent for the Premier, and begged the Whig

Ministers favourable to the franchise bill not to resign, and intimated

that this was also the wish of the Lords who had thrown out the bill.

Molesworth's History of England says:

These declarations were imperatively called for. The danger was

imminent and the Ministers knew it and did all that lay in their

power to tranquillise the people, and to assure them that the bill

was only delayed and not finally defeated.

For a time the people believed this, but soon they lost patience, and

seeing signs of a renewed activity on the part of the anti-suffragists,

they became aggressive again. Bristol, the very city in which Mr.

Hobhouse made his speech, was set on fire. The militant reformers burned

the new gaol, the toll houses, the Bishop's Palace, both sides of

Queen's Square, including the Mansion House, the custom house, the

excise office, many warehouses, and other private property, the whole

valued at over L100,000--five hundred thousand dollars. It was as a

result of such violence, and in fear of more violence, that the reform

bill was hurried through Parliament and became law in June, 1832.

Our demonstration, so mild by comparison with English men's political

agitation, was announced for March 4th, and the announcement created

much public alarm. Sir William Byles gave notice that he would "ask the

Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention had

been drawn to a speech by Mrs. Pankhurst last Friday night, openly and

emphatically inciting her hearers to violent outrage and the destruction

of property, and threatening the use of firearms if stones did not prove

sufficiently effective; and what steps he proposes to take to protect

Society from this outbreak of lawlessness."

The question was duly asked, and the Home Secretary replied that his

attention had been called to the speech, but that it would not be

desirable in the public interest to say more than this at present.

Whatever preparations the police department were making to prevent the

demonstration, they failed because, while as usual, we were able to

calculate exactly what the police department were going to do, they were

utterly unable to calculate what we were going to do. We had planned a

demonstration for March 4th, and this one we announced. We planned

another demonstration for March 1st, but this one we did not announce.

Late in the afternoon of Friday, March 1st, I drove in a taxicab,

accompanied by the Hon. Secretary of the Union, Mrs. Tuke and another of

our members, to No. 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the

Prime Minister. It was exactly half past five when we alighted from the

cab and threw our stones, four of them, through the window panes. As we

expected we were promptly arrested and taken to Cannon Row police

station. The hour that followed will long be remembered in London. At

intervals of fifteen minutes relays of women who had volunteered for the

demonstration did their work. The first smashing of glass occurred in

the Haymarket and Piccadilly, and greatly startled and alarmed both

pedestrians and police. A large number of the women were arrested, and

everybody thought that this ended the affair. But before the excited

populace and the frustrated shop owners' first exclamation had died

down, before the police had reached the station with their prisoners,

the ominous crashing and splintering of plate glass began again, this

time along both sides of Regent Street and the Strand. A furious rush of

police and people towards the second scene of action ensued. While their

attention was being taken up with occurrences in this quarter, the third

relay of women began breaking the windows in Oxford Circus and Bond

Street. The demonstration ended for the day at half past six with the

breaking of many windows in the Strand. The _Daily Mail_ gave this

graphic account of the demonstration:

From every part of the crowded and brilliantly lighted streets came

the crash of splintered glass. People started as a window shattered

at their side; suddenly there was another crash in front of them;

on the other side of the street; behind--everywhere. Scared shop

assistants came running out to the pavements; traffic stopped;

policemen sprang this way and that; five minutes later the streets

were a procession of excited groups, each surrounding a woman

wrecker being led in custody to the nearest police station.

Meanwhile the shopping quarter of London had plunged itself into a

sudden twilight. Shutters were hurriedly fitted; the rattle of iron

curtains being drawn came from every side. Guards of

commissionaires and shopmen were quickly mounted, and any

unaccompanied lady in sight, especially if she carried a hand bag,

became an object of menacing suspicion.

At the hour when this demonstration was being made a conference was

being held at Scotland Yard to determine what should be done to prevent

the smashing of windows on the coming Monday night. But we had not

announced the hour of our March 4th protest. I had in my speech simply

invited women to assemble in Parliament Square on the evening of March

4th, and they accepted the invitation. Said the _Daily Telegraph_:

By six o'clock the neighbourhood Houses of Parliament were in a

stage of siege. Shop keepers in almost every instance barricaded

their premises, removed goods from the windows and prepared for the

worst. A few minutes before six o'clock a huge force of police,

amounting to nearly three thousand constables, was posted in

Parliament Square, Whitehall, and streets adjoining, and large

reserves were gathered in Westminster Hall and Scotland Yard. By

half past eight Whitehall was packed from end to end with police

and public. Mounted constables rode up and down Whitehall keeping

the people on the move. At no time was there any sign of danger....

The demonstration had taken place in the morning, when a hundred or more

women walked quietly into Knightsbridge and walking singly along the

streets demolished nearly every pane of glass they passed. Taken by

surprise the police arrested as many as they could reach, but most of

the women escaped.

[Illustration: THE ARGUMENT OF THE BROKEN WINDOW PANE]

For that two days' work something like two hundred suffragettes were

taken to the various police stations, and for days the long procession

of women streamed through the courts. The dismayed magistrates found

themselves facing, not only former rebels, but many new ones, in some

cases, women whose names, like that of Dr. Ethel Smyth, the composer,

were famous throughout Europe. These women, when arraigned, made clear

and lucid statements of their positions and their motives, but

magistrates are not schooled to examine motives. They are trained to

think only of laws and mostly of laws protecting property. Their ears

are not tuned to listen to words like those spoken by one of the

prisoners, who said: "We have tried every means--processions and

meetings--which were of no avail. We have tried demonstrations, and now

at last we have to break windows. I wish I had broken more. I am not in

the least repentant. Our women are working in far worse condition than

the striking miners. I have seen widows struggling to bring up their

children. Only two out of every five are fit to be soldiers. What is the

good of a country like ours? England is absolutely on the wane. You only

have one point of view, and that is the men's, and while men have done

the best they could, they cannot go far without the women and the

women's views. We believe the whole is in a muddle too horrible to think

of."

The coal miners were at that time engaging in a terrible strike, and the

Government, instead of arresting the leaders, were trying to come to

terms of peace with them. I reminded the magistrate of this fact, and I

told him that what the women had done was but a fleabite by comparison

with the miners' violence. I said further: "I hope our demonstration

will be enough to show the Government that the women's agitation is

going on. If not, if you send me to prison, I will go further to show

that women who have to help pay the salaries of Cabinet Ministers, and

your salary too, sir, are going to have some voice in the making of the

laws they have to obey."

I was sentenced to two months' imprisonment. Others received sentences

ranging from one week to two months, while those who were accused of

breaking glass above five pounds in value, were committed for trial in

higher courts. They were sent to prison on remand, and when the last of

us were behind the grim gates, not only Holloway but three other women's

prisons were taxed to provide for so many extra inmates.

It was a stormy imprisonment for most of us. A great many of the women

had received, in addition to their sentences, "hard labour," and this

meant that the privileges at that time accorded to Suffragettes, as

political offenders, were withheld. The women adopted the hunger strike

as a protest, but as the hint was conveyed to me that the privileges

would be restored, I advised a cessation of the strike. The remand

prisoners demanded that I be allowed to exercise with them, and when

this was not answered they broke the windows of their cells. The other

suffrage prisoners, hearing the sound of shattered glass, and the

singing of the Marseillaise, immediately broke their windows. The time

had long gone by when the Suffragettes submitted meekly to prison

discipline. And so passed the first days of my imprisonment.