Mr. Lloyd George at Lime House; Twelve Women Sent to Prison; Another Strike. Hunger Strikers in Exeter Gaol. The Scenes at Canford Park and Rushpool Hall. Mrs. Leigh on the Roof at Liverpool; Liverpool Hunger Strikers. Manchester Hunger Strikers; Leicester Hunger Strikers; Dundee Hunger Strikers. The Cleveland By-Election.
The vindictive attitude of the Government and the sufferings and heroism of the women in prison, spurred on their comrades outside to deeds of renewed bravery and daring. Everywhere vast throngs of people supported the Suffragettes in their protests and no precautions, however great, or barricades, however high and strong, could keep the women's voices out. "Shame on you, Mr. Asquith," they cried, as he was unveiling a statue in the Embankment Gardens. "Shame on you for putting women in dark cells instead of treating them as political prisoners. Why don't you give us the vote and end it?" "Ladies and gentlemen," thoughtlessly began Mr. Gladstone at a Reading meeting from which all women had been excluded, and when there were shouts of, "Where are they?" he answered, "Not far off, anyway." He was right, for soon their speeches, delivered at a meeting in the street outside, were to be heard within, competing dangerously with his own.
When, on July 15th, Mr. Lewis Harcourt was speaking at the Co-operative Hall, Leigh, Lancashire, the Suffragettes rushed towards the doors. Thousands of people cheered them on, crying: "We will help you to get inside," and though the police arrested Miss Florence Clarkson of Manchester, Mrs. Baines and three other women, all but the first were rescued by the crowd.
On July 17th, Adela Pankhurst held a great meeting outside Mr. Winston Churchill's meeting in Edinburgh and afterwards, amid the enthusiastic plaudits of the crowd, she and Bessie Brand[37] made a dash for the doors, followed and supported by hundreds of men and women. They were arrested by detectives in plain clothes and taken to the police station, whilst cheering men raised their hats and women waved their scarves and handkerchiefs. A second charge led by Miss Eckford of Edinburgh was beaten back by mounted police, and when Mr. Churchill emerged he was greeted with a storm of groans. Those who had been arrested were released after the meeting.
Numbers of men, most of them members of the Men's Political Union, were now also coming forward to demand justice for women at the meetings from which the women were excluded. If they had gone there to heckle Cabinet Ministers on any other question nothing very much would have happened, but now most terrible violence was turned upon them.
At Mr. Herbert Samuel's meeting in the Corn Exchange, Bedford, on the 22nd July, four men undertook to make the protest. At the first sound of the word "Women" two whole rows of seats were overturned, and the interrupter was immediately rushed out, whilst Mr. Samuel remarked with a sneer that he was interested to meet "a Suffragist of the male persuasion," but that he suspected the interrupter of being a "Conservative hireling." A second man rose up and cried: "I am a Liberal and I protest," but the stewards at once set upon him and he was thrown through a door at the back of the platform and fell some six or seven feet to the ground floor, where he lay insensible for nearly half an hour; two other men, one of them a retired naval officer, met with a similar fate. At the same time four of the women who were holding a meeting outside the hall, were arrested and kept at the police station until Mr. Samuel had left the town.
When the same Cabinet Minister spoke at Nottingham the police again arrested, and subsequently released, four women, one of whom was Miss Watts, the daughter of a well-known local clergyman. A like procedure was adopted in numberless cases afterwards. Inside the hall, an unexpected protest was made by Mr. C. L. Rothera, the City Coroner for Nottingham and a prominent Liberal, but in spite of the fact that he was one of the most familiar and respected figures in the town, he narrowly escaped ejection.
At Northampton, Mr. Samuel again encountered the women, for a plucky little band, led by Miss Marie Brackenbury, attempted to rush the strong iron gates of the hall. They were flung back by the police, but, nothing daunted, Miss Brackenbury climbed to the top of a forty-foot scaffolding adjoining the Exchange, and, though the rain poured continuously, addressed the crowd from that great height.
But the most extraordinary scenes were perhaps those that took place when Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Sydney Buxton spoke at Limehouse on July 30th. Some twenty men were there determined to see that the women's cause should not be overlooked, and as soon as the singing of, "For he's a jolly good fellow," which heralded Mr. Lloyd George's appearance on the platform had died away, a man was seen climbing up one of the pillars at the back of the hall. Having mounted some fifteen feet from the ground, he uncoiled a rope from around his waist, contriving a sort of swing seat for himself, and, unfurling a purple-white-and-green flag, hung there above the meeting. Numbers of stewards at once rushed from every direction to haul him down, but more than a dozen of his friends had already gathered around the pillar. Instead of beginning their speeches, the Cabinet Ministers sat whispering together. Then one of them went across to Mrs. Lloyd George and a companion, and immediately these two, the only women present, left the meeting and the struggle began. Gradually the defenders of the pillar were wrenched from their posts. An eye-witness declared that he saw "one man frog-marched out by half a dozen stewards between two rows of infuriated blackguards, who were raining blows with their fists on his defenceless face." A gentleman, quite unconnected with the Suffragists men, who had taken no part in the struggle, protested against this excessive and cowardly violence, but was at once set upon and himself flung outside. One man, home from the Colonies, had his shoulder fractured, another had one wrist broken and the other sprained; another received black eyes and a broken nose; whilst a Cambridge undergraduate had his collarbone broken and a dozen other men needed medical attendance, one fainting through loss of blood some time after he had been ejected. At last the stewards reached the pillar, the rope was cut and the man aloft with the flag was hauled down and set upon by the mob of stewards, who tumbled over each other in the attempt to kick and strike at him; one man deliberately hit him over the face with a glass bottle. When finally he was thrown outside, the police carried him to a doctor.
Now the Cabinet Ministers proceeded with their speeches, but when Mr. Lloyd George began to speak of the "people's will," there came a megaphone chorus from a little workman's dwelling close to the hall where the Suffragettes were lying concealed, "Votes for Women," "Votes for Women," "Votes for Women." The stewards rushed to the windows on that side of the hall and shut them hurriedly, but the sound penetrated still for the people of the neighbourhood joined in and supported the megaphones with cheers and cries of "Stick to it, miss, stick to it." Even this was not all, for a desperate charge was being led against the police cordon that guarded the doors of the Hall and in this struggle thirteen women were placed under arrest.