Three days later, on November 13th, Mr. Winston Churchill visited Bristol to speak at the Colston Hall. Miss Theresa Garnet, the woman who had been twice through the hunger strike, and whom the Home Secretary had wrongfully accused of biting, resolved to humiliate Mr. Churchill, both as a member of the Government which preferred rather to imprison women than to enfranchise them and to torture them rather than to extend towards them the ordinary privileges of political prisoners; and also on his own account for his slippery and disingenuous statements in regard to the Votes for Women question.
She therefore met the train by which he was arriving from London and found him on the platform in the midst of a large force of detectives who formed a semi-circle around him. She rushed straight forward, and they either did not, or would not, see her coming, but the Cabinet Minister saw her, he paled and stood there as though petrified, only raising his arm to guard himself. She reached him and with a light riding switch, struck at him three times, saying, "Take that in the name of the insulted women of England." At that he grappled with her, wrested the switch from her hand, and put it in his pocket. Then she was seized and dragged away to prison.
She was charged with assaulting Mr. Churchill, but eventually this charge was withdrawn (presumably because Mr. Churchill knew that he would be subpœnaed as a witness) and, on being accused of having disturbed the peace, was sentenced to one month's imprisonment on refusing to be bound over.
Meanwhile 30,000 men and women had turned out to help the Suffragettes in their protest around the Colston Hall where Mr. Churchill was speaking, and during the evening four women were arrested, and afterwards punished with from two months' hard labour to fourteen days in the second division, whilst several men who had spoken up for them inside the Colston Hall were beaten unmercifully by the stewards. Forcible feeding was resorted to in Bristol Prison also, and handcuffs were used in some cases.
Meanwhile the supporters of the Liberal Government were adopting militant tactics on their own account. What was called "A League against the Lords" had been formed with the warmly expressed approval of many of the Liberal leaders, and, though the leaders had kept in the background, the members of the League had twice assembled in Parliament Square to hoot the peers as they drove by in their carriages, and had come into collision with the police.
At the same time the Liberal newspapers were openly commending the efforts of gangs of men who were going from meeting to meeting held by the Conservatives, and with shouts and violence were making it impossible for their political opponents to speak. Columns were devoted to describing the doings of what was called "The Voice" which persistently heckled Tariff Reformers and supporters of the House of Lords.
Mr. Winston Churchill was now arranging to hold a campaign of public meetings in Lancashire, and the W.S.P.U. publicly and openly appealed for funds to insure that protests and demonstrations should be made in connection with all his meetings. Thousands of pounds were, on the other hand, spent by the authorities to defeat the women's intentions. In Preston, in addition to many other precautions, seventy men were employed and £150 spent on barricading the windows and roof of the Hall where Mr. Churchill was to speak, and at Southport £250 was laid out on mounted police to protect the Empire Music Hall alone.
When the Southport meeting began Mr. Churchill looked ill at ease and turned about sharply from time to time as though expecting an interruption. But at last he seemed to gain confidence and was proceeding briskly with his remarks, when, suddenly, there floated down from the roof a soft voice, faint and reedy, and peering through one of the great porthole-like openings in the slope of the ceiling, was seen a strange little elfin form with wan childish face, broad brow and big grey eyes, looking like nothing real or earthly but a dream waif. But for the weary paleness of her, she might have been one of those dainty little child angels the old Italian painters loved to show peeping down from the tops of high clouds or nestling amongst the details of their stately architecture. It was Dora Marsden who with two other women had lain concealed on the roof since two o'clock in the small hours of the previous morning. So unexpected and pathetic was this little figure that leant further forward to repeat her message that the audience could not forbear to cheer her. They stood up, waving their hats and programmes, "looking delighted," as the loftily placed intruder herself observed. Mrs. Churchill smiled also and waved her hand and even Mr. Churchill, though this was probably because of his wife's presence, and of the general feeling of the audience, himself looked pleasantly up and said, "If some stewards will fetch those ladies after my speech is concluded, I shall be glad to answer any questions they may put to me."
But the stewards, who by this time had found the women, were not disposed to bring them into the hall. A hand was thrust over Dora Marsden's mouth and she and the others were roughly pulled back from their coign of vantage, pushed through a window, and sent rolling down the steep sloping roof. "Stop that, you fools," someone cried out, "you will all fall over the edge," but one of the stewards answered, "I do not care what happens." Fortunately two of the Suffragettes were caught in their perilous descent by the edge of a water trough whilst a policeman seized Dora Marsden by the ankle, telling her, "If I had not caught your foot, you would have gone to glory." Once safely on the ground the women were placed under arrest, but the case against them was eventually dismissed.
At Preston, Suffragettes dressed in shawls and clogs sallied forth at night and pasted forcible feeding posters on the street pillar boxes, the prison and other public buildings and the windows and doors of the Liberal Club, as a welcome to Mr. Churchill, and in connection with turbulent scenes which occurred whilst his meeting was in progress, four women were arrested. At every other town he visited the same kind of thing occurred. At Waterloo, there was one arrest, at Liverpool there were two, and one at Bolton and one at Crewe.