Day by day the warfare with Mr. Churchill continued, a large proportion of the inhabitants of the district gradually becoming more and more completely converted to the women's point of view. In some cases after violent scenes of disorder, the entire audience got up and left the meeting to show their sympathy with them.
In our Manchester election campaign we did not confine ourselves, however, merely to questioning and Heckling Mr. Churchill. We also held numberless meetings of our own and distributed thousands of leaflets.
One day my brother Harry, who was then fifteen years of age, suggested to us a scheme which, though it involved some risk of prosecution, we found irresistible. Accordingly, in the small hours of the last two mornings before polling, he and two of his school fellows set off with brush and paste can and some long narrow slips called "fly posters," with "Votes for Women" printed in black letters upon them. Whilst the other two boys kept a lookout for passing policemen, Harry pasted these slips cornerwise across Mr. Churchill's great red and white posters which appeared on every hoarding in the constituency, just as the ordinary advertiser does when he wishes to bring out special points of attraction to heighten the public interest.
Though Mr. Churchill won the Election, his majority was smaller than that of any of the other Manchester Liberal candidates.
One of the most active workers in the new militant campaign was Mrs. Flora Drummond, a cheery, rosy-faced little woman, a native of the Island of Arran. As a girl Flora Gibson had been daring and high-spirited, a good swimmer, a splendid walker, and the leader in all kinds of out-door sports and games. On leaving school she successfully passed all examinations for the position of post mistress, but immediately afterwards the Post Master General raised the height standard for all post masters and mistresses to five feet, two inches, the same standard being exacted both for men and women although the average height of men is of course greater than that of women. Flora Gibson was only five feet one inch in height, and as it had been only at considerable sacrifice that her widowed mother had been able to pay for her education, poor Flora was in despair; but her father's relations agreed to pay the necessary fees for her to learn shorthand and typewriting. She soon became exceedingly skilled and took a Society of Arts certificate. Shortly after this she married Mr. Drummond, a journeyman upholsterer, and removed to Manchester, his native place. Soon after her marriage she was obliged to resume her typewriting because bad trade threw Mr. Drummond out of regular employment. Eventually she became manager of the Oliver Typewriter Company's office in Manchester. She had joined the W. S. P. U. on hearing of the imprisonment of Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst.
Mrs. Drummond was invaluable for the work of questioning Cabinet Ministers which was carried on continuously in spite of our Manchester election campaign. When, early in January, 1906, we heard that the Prime Minister was to speak at the Sun Hall, Liverpool, she and several other members of the Union agreed to go over and question him. Mr. Balfour, who was then fighting a losing battle in the effort to retain his old seat in East Manchester, had agreed to receive a deputation from our Union. Nothing very important came of the interview, though Mr. Balfour's reply was kindly and sympathetic, but long before Mr. Balfour's hotel had been reached the deputation had discovered that they were being shadowed by detectives. As it had been arranged that some of the women should go straight on to Liverpool, they made every attempt to shake off their pursuers. Proceeding first in one direction and then in another, they were tracked all over Manchester and Liverpool until finally Christabel said good-bye to her companions and returned to Manchester. Then, instead of breaking up into two parties the detectives all followed her, whilst the other women, in company with a number of Liverpool members of our Union, quietly made their way to the Sun Hall, where nine of them subsequently questioned the Prime Minister and were all thrown out of the hall without receiving a reply. After the first woman had been rejected Sir Campbell-Bannerman said: "If I might have done so, I could have calmed that lady's nerves by telling her that I am in favour of Women's Suffrage," but this, of course, was no answer to the question as to whether the Government was prepared to enfranchise the women of the country.
On January 15th Mrs. Drummond and a number of her friends in Glasgow attended a meeting of the Prime Minister's in the St. Andrew's Hall there. Heckling is a regular institution in Scotland, and the Glasgow women declared that they would certainly receive courteous replies. On asking the usual question Mrs. Drummond was at once flung out by the stewards and immediately afterwards one of her companions who had hitherto been a staunch Liberal approached her with hat awry and dishevelled clothing saying in bewilderment, "Oh my, they pet me oot!"
During these weeks questions were also put at several other meetings including that of Mr. Asquith in the Sheffield Drill Hall. Everywhere the women were ejected. On January 25th one of the last big Liberal meetings of the General Election was held at Altrincham in Cheshire, Mr. Lloyd George being the principal speaker. The members of the W. S. P. U. who were present did not interrupt him during his speech but waited until he had finished before asking him the usual question. Mr. Lloyd George then said: "I was going to congratulate myself that I had escaped this; however, at the last meeting of the campaign the spectre has appeared." That was all, and the women were quickly hauled out to prevent their again raising their voices.
So the General Election ended, and we were still left without that pledge from the Liberal leaders which we had set ourselves to gain. Those of us who went through the campaign will be ever at a loss to understand the motives which led the Liberal leaders to treat our first orderly and considerate questioning and even the later, more persistent heckling, as they did. They obviously had neither the wish nor the intention of giving votes to women during their term of office, and it was probably the fear of offending the ladies who canvassed for them that prevented their plainly saying so. Yet after all, they were accustomed to parrying the questioning of men and it was surely unwise, even from their own standpoint, to deal so violently with women.
All that had been done by the new militant suffragists up to now had been merely the brilliant skirmishing of an intrepid and resourceful little band of enthusiasts driven to employ somewhat unconventional methods, both by the old established custom of boycotting their cause and by the ruthless brutality of the forces that were arrayed against them. Our opponents called us "a stage army" and "a family party," and the designations were not inapt, but the little stage army was always cleverly marshalled, and its soldiers were as cheerfully and affectionately loyal to the mother of the movement and to the young general who had initiated the new tactics as though in reality they had all been members of a single family.