CHAPTER IV

To account for the phenomenal growth of the Women's Social and Political

Union after it was established in London, to explain why it made such an

instant appeal to women hitherto indifferent, I shall have to point out

exactly wherein our society differs from all other suffrage

associations. In the first place, our members are absolutely single

minded; they concentrate all their forces on one object, political

equality with men. No member of the W. S. P. U. divides her attention

between suffrage and other social reforms. We hold that both reason and

justice dictate that women shall have a share in reforming the evils

that afflict society, especially those evils bearing directly on women

themselves. Therefore, we demand, before any other legislation whatever,

the elementary justice of votes for women.

There is not the slightest doubt that the women of Great Britain would

have been enfranchised years ago had all the suffragists adopted this

simple principle. They never did, and even to-day many English women

refuse to adopt it. They are party members first and suffragists

afterward; or they are suffragists part of the time and social theorists

the rest of the time. We further differ from other suffrage

associations, or from others existing in 1906, in that we clearly

perceived the political situation that solidly interposed between us and

our enfranchisement.

For seven years we had had a majority in the House of Commons pledged to

vote favourably on a suffrage bill. The year before, they had voted

favourably on one, yet that bill did not become law. Why? Because even

an overwhelming majority of private members are powerless to enact law

in the face of a hostile Government of eleven cabinet ministers. The

private member of Parliament was once possessed of individual power and

responsibility, but Parliamentary usage and a changed conception of

statesmanship have gradually lessened the functions of members. At the

present time their powers, for all practical purposes, are limited to

helping to enact such measures as the Government introduces or, in rare

instances, private measures approved by the Government. It is true that

the House can revolt, can, by voting a lack of confidence in the

Government, force them to resign. But that almost never happens, and it

is less likely now than formerly to happen. Figureheads don't revolt.

This, then, was our situation: the Government all-powerful and

consistently hostile; the rank and file of legislators impotent; the

country apathetic; the women divided in their interests. The Women's

Social and Political Union was established to meet this situation, and

to overcome it. Moreover we had a policy which, if persisted in long

enough, could not possibly fail to overcome it. Do you wonder that we

gained new members at every meeting we held?

There was little formality about joining the Union. Any woman could

become a member by paying a shilling, but at the same time she was

required to sign a declaration of loyal adherence to our policy and a

pledge not to work for any political party until the women's vote was

won. This is still our inflexible custom. Moreover, if at any time a

member, or a group of members, loses faith in our policy; if any one

begins to suggest, that some other policy ought to be substituted, or if

she tries to confuse the issue by adding other policies, she ceases at

once to be a member. Autocratic? Quite so. But, you may object, a

suffrage organisation ought to be democratic. Well the members of the

W. S. P. U. do not agree with you. We do not believe in the

effectiveness of the ordinary suffrage organisation. The W. S. P. U. is

not hampered by a complexity of rules. We have no constitution and

by-laws; nothing to be amended or tinkered with or quarrelled over at an

annual meeting. In fact, we have no annual meeting, no business

sessions, no elections of officers. The W. S. P. U. is simply a suffrage

army in the field. It is purely a volunteer army, and no one is obliged

to remain in it. Indeed we don't want anybody to remain in it who does

not ardently believe in the policy of the army.

The foundation of our policy is opposition to a Government who refuse

votes to women. To support by word or deed a Government hostile to woman

suffrage is simply to invite them to go on being hostile. We oppose the

Liberal party because it is in power. We would oppose a Unionist

government if it were in power and were opposed to woman suffrage. We

say to women that as long as they remain in the ranks of the Liberal

party they give their tacit approval to the Government's anti-suffrage

policy. We say to members of Parliament that as long as they support any

of the Government's policies they give their tacit approval to the

anti-suffrage policy. We call upon all sincere suffragists to leave the

Liberal party until women are given votes on equal terms with men. We

call upon all voters to vote against Liberal candidates until the

Liberal Government does justice to women.

We did not invent this policy. It was most successfully pursued by Mr.

Parnell in his Home Rule struggle more than thirty-five years ago. Any

one who is old enough to remember the stirring days of Parnell may

recall how, in 1885, the Home Rulers, by persistently voting against the

Government in the House of Commons, forced the resignation of Mr.

Gladstone and his Cabinet. In the general election which followed, the

Liberal party was again returned to power, but by the slender majority

of eighty-four, the Home Rulers having fought every Liberal candidate,

even those, who, like my husband, were enthusiastic believers in Home

Rule. In order to control the House and keep his leadership, Mr.

Gladstone was obliged to bring in a Government Home Rule Bill. The

downfall, through private intrigue, and the subsequent death of Parnell

prevented the bill from becoming law. For many years afterward the Irish

Nationalists had no leader strong enough to carry on Parnell's

anti-government policy, but within late years it was resumed by Mr.

James Redmond, with the result that the Commons passed a Home Rule

Bill.

The contention of the old-fashioned suffragists, and of the politicians

as well, has always been that an educated public opinion will ultimately

give votes to women without any great force being exerted in behalf of

the reform. We agree that public opinion must be educated, but we

contend that even an educated public opinion is useless unless it is

vigorously utilised. The keenest weapon is powerless unless it is

courageously wielded. In the year 1906 there was an immensely large

public opinion in favour of woman suffrage. But what good did that do

the cause? We called upon the public for a great deal more than

sympathy. We called upon it to demand of the Government to yield to

public opinion and give women votes. And we declared that we would wage

war, not only on all anti-suffrage forces, but on all neutral and

non-active forces. Every man with a vote was considered a foe to woman

suffrage unless he was prepared to be actively a friend.

Not that we believed that the campaign of education ought to be given

up. On the contrary, we knew that education must go on, and in much more

vigorous fashion than ever before. The first thing we did was to enter

upon a sensational campaign to arouse the public to the importance of

woman suffrage, and to interest it in our plans for forcing the

Government's hands. I think we can claim that our success in this regard

was instant, and that it has proved permanent. From the very first, in

those early London days, when we were few in numbers and very poor in

purse, we made the public aware of the woman suffrage movement as it had

never been before. We adopted Salvation Army methods and went out into

the highways and the byways after converts. We threw away all our

conventional notions of what was "ladylike" and "good form," and we

applied to our methods the one test question, Will it help? Just as the

Booths and their followers took religion to the street crowds in such

fashion that the church people were horrified, so we took suffrage to

the general public in a manner that amazed and scandalised the other

suffragists.

We had a lot of suffrage literature printed, and day by day our members

went forth and held street meetings. Selecting a favourable spot, with a

chair for a rostrum, one of us would ring a bell until people began to

stop to see what was going to happen. What happened, of course, was a

lively suffrage speech, and the distribution of literature. Soon after

our campaign had started, the sound of the bell was a signal for a crowd

to spring up as if by magic. All over the neighbourhood you heard the

cry: "Here are the Suffragettes! Come on!" We covered London in this

way; we never lacked an audience, and best of all, an audience to which

the woman-suffrage doctrine was new. We were increasing our favourable

public as well as waking it up. Besides these street meetings, we held

many hall and drawing-room meetings, and we got a great deal of press

publicity, which was something never accorded the older suffrage

methods.

Our plans included the introduction of a Government suffrage bill at

the earliest possible moment, and in the spring of 1906 we sent a

deputation of about thirty of our members to interview the Prime

Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The Prime Minister, it was

stated, was not at home; so in a few days we sent another deputation.

This time the servant agreed to carry our request to the Prime Minister.

The women waited patiently on the doorstep of the official residence,

No. 10 Downing Street, for nearly an hour. Then the door opened and two

men appeared. One of the men addressed the leader of the deputation,

roughly ordering her and the others to leave. "We have sent a message to

the Prime Minister," she replied, "and we are waiting for the answer."

"There will be no answer," was the stern rejoinder, and the door closed.

"Yes, there will be an answer," exclaimed the leader, and she seized the

door-knocker and banged it sharply. Instantly the men reappeared, and

one of them called to a policeman standing near, "Take this woman in

charge." The order was obeyed, and the peaceful deputation saw its

leader taken off to Canon Row Station.

Instantly the women protested vigorously. Annie Kenney began to address

the crowd that had gathered, and Mrs. Drummond actually forced her way

past the doorkeeper into the sacred residence of the Prime Minister of

the British Empire! Her arrest and Annie's followed. The three women

were detained at the police station for about an hour, long enough, the

Prime Minister probably thought, to frighten them thoroughly and teach

them not to do such dreadful things again. Then he sent them word that

he had decided not to prosecute them, but would, on the contrary,

receive a deputation from the W. S. P. U., and, if they cared to attend,

from other suffrage societies as well.

All the suffrage organisations at once began making preparations for the

great event. At the same time two hundred members of Parliament sent a

petition to the Prime Minister, asking him to receive their committee

that they might urge upon him the necessity of a Government measure for

woman suffrage. Sir Henry fixed May 19th as the day on which he would

receive a joint deputation from Parliament and from the women's suffrage

organisations.

The W. S. P. U. determined to make the occasion as public as possible,

and began preparations for a procession and a demonstration. When the

day came we assembled at the foot of the beautiful monument to the

warrior-queen, Boadicea, that guards the entrance to Westminster Bridge,

and from there we marched to the Foreign Office. At the meeting eight

women spoke in behalf of an immediate suffrage measure, and Mr. Keir

Hardie presented the argument for the suffrage members of Parliament. I

spoke for the W. S. P. U., and I tried to make the Prime Minister see

that no business could be more pressing than ours. I told him that the

group of women organised in our Union felt so strongly the necessity for

women enfranchisement that they were prepared to sacrifice for it

everything they possessed, their means of livelihood, their very lives,

if necessary. I begged him to make such a sacrifice needless by doing us

justice now.

What answer do you think Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman made us? He

assured us of his sympathy with our cause, his belief in its justice,

and his confidence in our fitness to vote. And then he told us to have

patience and wait; he could do nothing for us because some of his

Cabinet were opposed to us. After a few more words the usual vote of

thanks was moved, and the deputation was dismissed. I had not expected

anything better, but it wrung my heart to see the bitter disappointment

of the W. S. P. U. women who had waited in the street to hear from the

leaders the result of the deputation. We held a great meeting of protest

that afternoon, and determined to carry on our agitation with increased

vigor.

Now that it had been made plain that the Government were resolved not to

bring in a suffrage bill, there was nothing to do but to continue our

policy of waking up the country, not only by public speeches and

demonstrations, but by a constant heckling of Cabinet Ministers. Since

the memorable occasion when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were

thrown out of Sir Edward Grey's meeting in Manchester, and afterward

imprisoned for the crime of asking a courteous question, we had not lost

an opportunity of addressing the same question to every Cabinet Minister

we could manage to encounter. For this we have been unmercifully

criticised, and in a large number of cases most brutally handled.

In almost every one of my American meetings I was asked the question,

"What good do you expect to accomplish by interrupting meetings?" Is it

possible that the time-honoured, almost sacred English privilege of

interrupting is unknown in America? I cannot imagine a political meeting

from which "the Voice" was entirely absent. In England it is invariably

present. It is considered the inalienable right of the opposition to

heckle the speaker and to hurl questions at him which are calculated to

spoil his arguments. For instance, when Liberals attend a Conservative

gathering they go prepared to shatter by witticisms and pointed

questions all the best effects of the Conservative orators. The next day

you will read in Liberal newspapers headlines like these: "The Voice in

Fine Form," "Short Shrift for Tory Twaddle," "Awkward Answers from the

Enemy's Platform." In the body of the article you will learn that "Lord

X found that the Liberals at his meeting were more than a match for

him," that "there was continued interruption during Sir So-and-so's

speech," that "Lord M fared badly last night in his encounter with the

Voice," or that "Captain Z had the greatest difficulty in making himself

heard."

In accordance with this custom we heckle Cabinet Ministers. Mr. Winston

Churchill, for example, is speaking. "One great question," he exclaims,

"remains to be settled."

"And that is woman suffrage," shouts a voice from the gallery.

Mr. Churchill struggles on with his speech: "The men have been

complaining of me----"

"The women have been complaining of you, too, Mr. Churchill," comes

back promptly from the back of the hall.

"In the circumstances what can we do but----"

"Give votes to women."

Our object, of course, is to keep woman suffrage in the foreground of

interest and to insist on every possible occasion that no other reform

advocated is of such immediate importance.

From the first the women's interruptions have been resented with

unreasoning anger. I remember hearing Mr. Lloyd-George saying once of a

man who interrupted him:

"Let him remain. I like interruptions. They show that people holding

different opinions to mine are present, giving me a chance to convert

them." But when suffragists interrupt Mr. Lloyd-George he says something

polite like this: "Pay no attention to those cats mewing."

Some of the ministers are more well bred in their expressions, but all

are disdainful and resentful. All see with approval the brutal ejection

of the women by the Liberal stewards.

At one meeting where Mr. Lloyd-George was speaking, we interrupted with

a question, and he claimed the sympathy of the audience on the score

that he was a friend to woman suffrage. "Then why don't you do something

to give votes to women?" was the obvious retort. But Mr. Lloyd-George

evaded this by the counter query: "Why don't they go for their enemies?

Why don't they go for their greatest enemy?" Instantly, all over the

hall, voices shouted, "Asquith! Asquith!" For even at that early day it

was known that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer was a stern foe of

women's independence.

In the summer of 1906, together with other members of the W. S. P. U., I

went to Northampton, where Mr. Asquith was holding a large meeting in

behalf of the Government's education bills. We organised a number of

outdoor meetings, and of course prepared to attend Mr. Asquith's

meeting. In conversation with the president of the local Women's Liberal

Association, I mentioned the fact that we expected to be put out, and

she indignantly declared that such a thing could not happen in

Northampton, where the women had done so much for the Liberal party. I

told her that I hoped she would be at the meeting.

I had not intended to go myself, my plans being to hold a meeting of my

own outside the door. But our members, before Mr. Asquith began to

speak, attempted to question him, and were thrown out with violence. So

then, turning my meeting over to them, I slipped quietly into the hall

and sat down in the front row of a division set apart for wives and

women friends of the Liberal leaders. I sat there in silence, hearing

men interrupt the speaker and get answers to their questions. At the

close of the speech I stood up and, addressing the chairman, said: "I

should like to ask Mr. Asquith a question about education." The chairman

turned inquiringly to Mr. Asquith, who frowningly shook his head. But

without waiting for the chairman to say a word, I continued: "Mr.

Asquith has said that the parents of children have a right to be

consulted in the matter of their children's education, especially upon

such questions as the kind of religious instruction they should receive.

Women are parents. Does not Mr. Asquith think that women should have the

right to control their children's education, as men do, through the

vote?" At this point the stewards seized me by the arms and shoulders

and rushed me, or rather dragged me, for I soon lost my footing, to the

door and threw me out of the building.

The effect on the president of the Northampton Women's Liberal

Association was most salutary. She resigned her office and became a

member of the W. S. P. U. Perhaps her action was influenced further by

the press reports of the incident. Mr. Asquith was reported as saying,

after my ejection, that it was difficult to enter into the minds of

people who thought they could serve a cause which professed to appeal to

the reason of the electors of the country by disturbing public meetings.

Apparently he could enter into the minds of the men who disturbed public

meetings.

To our custom of public heckling of the responsible members of the

hostile Government we added the practice of sending deputations to them

for the purpose of presenting orderly arguments in favour of our cause.

After Mr. Asquith had shown himself so uninformed as to the objects of

the suffragists, we decided to ask him to receive a deputation from the

W. S. P. U. To our polite letter Mr. Asquith returned a cold refusal to

be interviewed on any subject not connected with his particular office.

Whereupon we wrote again, reminding Mr. Asquith that as a member of the

Government he was concerned with all questions likely to be dealt with

by Parliament. We said that we urgently desired to put our question

before him, and that we would send a deputation to his house hoping that

he would feel it his duty to receive us.

Our first deputation was told that Mr. Asquith was not at home. He had,

in fact, escaped from the house through the back door, and had sped away

in a fast motor-car. Two days later we sent a larger deputation, of

about thirty women, to his house in Cavendish Square. To be accurate,

the deputation got as near the house as the entrance to Cavendish

Square; there the women met a strong force of police, who told them that

they would not be permitted to go farther.

Many of the women were carrying little "Votes for Women" banners, and

these the police tore from them, in some cases with blows and insults.

Seeing this, the leader of the deputation cried out: "We will go

forward. You have no right to strike women like that." The reply, from a

policeman near her, was a blow in the face. She screamed with pain and

indignation, whereupon the man grasped her by the throat and choked her

against the park railings until she was blue in the face. The young

woman struggled and fought back, and for this she was arrested on a

charge of assaulting the police. Three other women were arrested, one

because, in spite of the police, she succeeded in ringing Mr. Asquith's

door-bell and another because she protested against the laughter of

some ladies who watched the affair from a drawing-room window. She was a

poor working-woman, and it seemed to her a terrible thing that rich and

protected women should ridicule a cause that to her was so profoundly

serious. The fourth woman was taken in charge, because after she had

been pushed off the pavement, she dared to step back. Charged with

disorderly conduct, these women were sentenced to six weeks in the

Second Division. They were given the option of a fine, it is true, but

the payment of a fine would have been an acknowledgment of guilt, which

made such a course impossible. The leader of the deputation was given a

two months' sentence, with the option of a fine of ten pounds. She, too,

refused to pay, and was sent to prison; but some unknown friend paid the

fine secretly, and she was released before the expiration of her

sentence.

About the time these things were happening in London, similar violence

was offered our women in Manchester, where John Burns, Lloyd-George, and

Winston Churchill, all three Cabinet Ministers, were addressing a great

Liberal demonstration. The women were there, as usual, to ask government

support for our measure. There, too, they were thrown out of the

meeting, and three of them were sent to prison.

There are people in England, plenty of them, who will tell you that the

Suffragettes were sent to prison for destroying property. The fact is

that hundreds of women were arrested for exactly such offences as I have

described before it ever occurred to any of us to destroy property. We

were determined, at the beginning of our movement, that we would make

ourselves heard, that we would force the Government to take up our

question and answer it by action in Parliament. Perhaps you will see

some parallel to our case in the stand taken in Massachusetts by the

early Abolitionists, Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison. They,

too, had to fight bitterly, to face insult and arrest, because they

insisted on being heard. And they were heard; and so, in time, were we.

I think we began to be noticed in earnest after our first success in

opposing a Liberal candidate. This was in a by-election held at

Cockermouth in August, 1906. I shall have to explain that a by-election

is a local election to fill a vacancy in Parliament caused by a death or

a resignation. The verdict of a by-election is considered as either an

indorsement or a censure of the manner in which the Government have

fulfilled their pre-election pledges. So we went to Cockermouth and told

the voters how the Liberal party had fulfilled its pledges of democracy

and lived up to its avowed belief in the rights of all the people. We

told them of the arrests in London and Manchester, of the shameful

treatment of women in Liberal meetings, and we asked them to censure the

Government who had answered so brutally our demand for a vote. We told

them that the only rebuke that the politicians would notice was a lost

seat in Parliament, and that on that ground we asked them to defeat the

Liberal candidate.

How we were ridiculed! With what scorn the newspapers declared that

"those wild women" could never turn a single vote. Yet when the

election was over it was found that the Liberal candidate had lost the

seat, which, at the general election a little more than a year before,

had been won by a majority of 655. This time the Unionist candidate was

returned by a majority of 609. Tremendously elated, we hurried our

forces off to another by-election.

Now the ridicule was turned to stormy abuse. Mind you, the Liberal

Government still refused to notice the women's question; they declared

through the Liberal press that the defeat at Cockermouth was

insignificant, and that anyhow it wasn't caused by the Suffragettes; yet

the Liberal leaders were furiously angry with the W. S. P. U. Many of

our members had been Liberals, and it was considered by the men that

these women were little better than traitors. They were very foolish and

ill-advised, into the bargain, the Liberals said, because the vote, if

won at all, must be gained from the Liberal party; and how did the women

suppose the Liberal party would ever give the vote to open and avowed

enemies? This sage argument was used also by the women Liberals and the

constitutional suffragists. They advised us that the proper way was to

work for the party. We retorted that we had done that unsuccessfully for

too many years already, and persisted with the opposite method of

persuasion.

Throughout the summer and autumn we devoted ourselves to the by-election

work, sometimes actually defeating the Liberal candidate, sometimes

reducing the Liberal majority, and always raising a tremendous sensation

and gaining hundreds of new members to the Union. In almost every

neighbourhood we visited we left the nucleus of a local union, so that

before the year was out we had branches all over England and many in

Scotland and Wales. I especially remember a by-election in Wales at

which Mr. Samuel Evans, who had accepted an officership under the Crown,

had to stand for re-election. Unfortunately no candidate had been

brought out against him. So there was nothing for my companions and me

to do but make his campaign as lively as possible. Mr.--now Sir

Samuel--Evans was the man who had incensed women by talking out a

suffrage resolution introduced into the House by Keir Hardie. So we went

to two of his meetings and literally talked him out, breaking up the

gatherings amid the laughter and cheers of delighted crowds.

On October 23d Parliament met for its autumn session, and we led a

deputation to the House of Commons in another effort to induce the

Government to take action on woman suffrage. In accordance with orders

given the police, only twenty of us were admitted to the Strangers'

Lobby. We sent in for the chief Liberal whip, and asked him to take a

message to the Prime Minister, the message being the usual request to

grant women the vote that session. We also asked the Prime Minister if

he intended to include the registration of qualified women voters in the

provisions of the plural voting bill, then under consideration. The

Liberal whip came back with the reply that nothing could be done for

women that session.

[Illustration: MRS. PANKHURST ADDRESSING A BY-ELECTION CROWD]

"Does the Prime Minister," I asked, "hold out any hope for the women

for any session during this Parliament, or at any future time?" The

Prime Minister, you will remember, called himself a suffragist.

The Liberal whip replied, "No, Mrs. Pankhurst, the Prime Minister does

not."

What would a deputation of unenfranchised men have done in these

circumstances--men who knew themselves to be qualified to exercise the

franchise, who desperately needed the protection of the franchise, and

who had a majority of legislators in favour of giving them the

franchise? I hope they would have done at least as much as we did, which

was to start a meeting of protest on the spot. The newspapers described

our action as creating a disgraceful scene in the lobby of the House of

Commons, but I think that history will otherwise describe it. One of the

women sprang up on a settee and began to address the crowd. In less than

a minute she was pulled down, but instantly another woman took her

place; and after she had been dragged down, still another sprang to her

place, and following her another and another, until the order came to

clear the lobby, and we were all forced outside.

In the melee I was thrown to the floor and painfully hurt. The women,

thinking me seriously injured, crowded around me and refused to move

until I was able to regain myself. This angered the police, who were

still more incensed when they found that the demonstration was continued

outside. Eleven women were arrested, including Mrs. Pethick Lawrence,

our treasurer, Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Annie Kenney and three more of our

organisers; and they were all sent to Holloway for two months. But the

strength of our movement was proved by the number of volunteers who

immediately came forward to carry on the work. Mrs. Tuke, now Hon.

Secretary of the W. S. P. U., joined the Union at this time. It had not

occurred to the authorities that their action would have this effect.

They thought to crush the Union at a blow, but they gave it the greatest

impetus it had yet received. The leaders of the older suffrage

organisations for the time forgot their disapproval of our methods, and

joined with women writers, physicians, actresses, artists, and other

prominent women in denouncing the affair as barbarous.

One more thing the authorities failed to take into account. The

condition of English prisons was known to be very bad, but when two of

our women were made so ill in Holloway that they had to be released

within a few days, the politicians began to tremble for their prestige.

Questions were asked in Parliament concerning the advisability of

treating the Suffragettes not as common criminals but as political

offenders with the right to confinement in the First Division. Mr.

Herbert Gladstone, the Home Secretary, replied to these questions that

he had no power to interfere with the magistrates' decisions, and could

do nothing in the matter of the suffragettes' punishment. I shall ask

you to remember this statement of Mr. Herbert Gladstone's, as later we

were able to prove it a deliberate falsehood--although really the

falsehood proved itself when the women, by Government order, were

released from prison when they had served just half their sentences.

The reason for this was that an important by-election was being held in

the north of England, and we had distributed broadcast throughout the

constituency hand bills telling the electors that nine women, including

the daughter of Richard Cobden, were being held as common criminals by

the Liberal Government who were asking for their votes.

I took a group of the released prisoners to Huddersfield, and they told

prison stories to such effect that the Liberal majority was reduced by

540 votes. As usual the Liberal leaders denied that our work had

anything to do with the slender majority by which the party retained the

seat, but among our souvenirs is a handbill, one of thousands given out

from Liberal headquarters:

+------------------------------+

| MEN OF HUDDERSFIELD |

| DON'T BE MISLED |

| BY SOCIALISTS, SUFFRAGETTES |

| OR TORIES |

| VOTE FOR SHERWELL |

+------------------------------+

Meanwhile, other demonstrations had taken place before the House of

Commons, and at Christmas time twenty-one suffragettes were in Holloway

Prison, though they had committed no crime. The Government professed

themselves unmoved, and members of Parliament spoke with sneers of the

"self-made martyrs." However, a considerable group of members, strongly

moved by the passion and unquenchable ardor of this new order of

suffragists, met during the last week of the year and formed a

committee whose object it was to press upon the government the necessity

of giving the franchise to women during that Parliament. The committee

resolved that its members would work to educate a wider public opinion

on the question, and especially to advocate suffrage when addressing

meetings in their constituencies, to take Parliamentary action on every

possible occasion, and to induce as many members of Parliament as

possible to ballot for the introduction of a suffrage bill or motion

next session.

Our first year in London had borne wonderful fruits. We had grown from a

mere handful of women, a "family party" the newspapers had derisively

called us, to a strong organisation with branches all over the country,

permanent headquarters in Clements Inn, Strand; we had found good

financial backing, and above all, we had created a suffrage committee in

the House of Commons.