The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910

by E. Sylvia Pankhurst

Writing in the Sussex Daily News for May 2nd, Mr. Spencer Leigh Hughes, well known under his pen name "Sub Rosa," recalled the account given in Lady Mary Montague's "Memoirs" of the way in which the Peeresses of the eighteenth century had frequently disturbed the serenity of the House of Lords debates, and how they had triumphed over the Lord Chancellor Philip Yorke, First Earl of Hardwicke, who had attempted to exclude them from the House of Lords. Lady Mary describes the "thumping," "rapping" and "running kicks" at the door of the House of Lords, indulged in by the Duchess of Queensberry and her friends, the strategy by which they finally obtained an entry, and the way in which, during the subsequent debate, they "showed marks of dislike not only by smiles and winks (which have always been allowed in these cases), but by noisy laughs and apparent contempts." Mr. Hughes ended by saying, "After this excellent and pertinent account of the action of the Peeresses in the House of Lords, I suppose no one will be so silly as to complain of what the women did the other day in the House of Commons."

Mr. Stead in the Review of Reviews published an article by a "Woman's Righter," who said:

Patience has been tried long enough, and what has it brought? Less than one ten minutes' expression of the divine impatience that the Suffragists showed in the Ladies' Gallery that memorable night!... "Surely it was unwomanly?" Pshaw! It was not anything like so unwomanly as it was unmanly to allow a cause admittedly just to be stifled without a single indignant protest.

Nevertheless, our supporters were still in the minority. Instead of upholding what we had done to rebuke the anti-Suffragists for their mean and cowardly policy of obstruction (a policy which had prevented the enfranchisement of women for so many years), the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and some of the members of the Parliamentary Committee, which was at the time engaged in arranging the deputation to the Prime Minister, now urged that the Women's Social and Political Union had disgraced itself too deeply to form part of the deputation. Efforts were made to induce us to withdraw from it, but this we refused to do. At last, both because some Members of Parliament—and it is said Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman himself—strongly supported our claim to be represented, and because it was well known that if we were not received we should simply agitate for another deputation, the attempt to exclude us had to be abandoned.

On the morning of May 19th our procession started from the Boadicea statue on Westminster Bridge. First came the members of the Deputation to the Prime Minister, amongst whom were to be seen the veteran Suffragist, fragile little Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy, with her grey curls, Mrs. Pankhurst, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Mr. Keir Hardie, and Annie Kenney, wearing the clogs and shawl which she had worn in the Lancashire cotton mill. Amongst the deputation marched a body of women textile workers from Lancashire and Cheshire, who had joined us, carrying the bright banners of their respective trades. Then came the great red banner of the Women's Social and Political Union, inscribed in white letters with the words, "We demand Votes for Women this Session." The poles of the banner were lashed to a big forage lorry in which rode a number of women, who were either too old or too feeble to walk. After these came the members of the Women's Social and Political Union and women members of various other societies and last of all, a large contingent from the East End of London, a piteous band, some of them sweated workers themselves, others the wives of unemployed working men, and many of them carrying half-starved-looking babies in their arms.

The deputation which assembled at the Foreign Office was introduced by Sir Charles M'Laren, and it was arranged that there should be eight women speakers. The first of these was the aged Miss Emily Davies, LL.D., one of the two women who in 1866, more than forty years before, had handed to John Stuart Mill the first petition for Women's Suffrage ever presented to Parliament, and whose part in opening the University examinations to women, and in founding Girton, the first of the women's colleges, will be gratefully remembered by women of all ages. In pleading for the removal of the sex disability Miss Davies said: "We do not regard it as a survival which nobody minds. We look upon it as an offence to those primarily concerned, and an injury to the community." Then Mrs. Eva M'Laren, Miss Margaret Ashton and Mrs. Rolland Rainy, representing respectively some 80,000, 99,000 and 14,000 women Liberals in England and Scotland, urged, each in her own way, that the Party for which these women had done so much should extend the franchise to them.

Miss Eva Gore Booth and Mrs. Sarah Dickinson, who had herself been a factory worker for sixteen years and a Trade Union Organiser for a further eleven years, then spoke on behalf of the fifty delegates from the Lancashire and Cheshire Textile and other Workers' Representation Committee. They dwelt on the low wages—often no more than six or seven shillings a week, and the other heavy economic hardships under which the women whom they represented were obliged to labour. They pointed out that these women, millions of whom since leaving school had never eaten a meal which they had not earned, were not only helping to produce the great wealth of the country but were caring for their homes and their children at the same time, and urged that they were every day more gravely conscious of the heavy disadvantage under which they suffered from their absolute lack of political power. Industrial questions were now becoming political questions, they said, and the vast numbers of women workers had their point of view and their interests which ought to be taken into consideration, but which were disregarded because they were without votes.

Next followed Mrs. Gasson, the speaker for 425 branches and 22,000 members of the Women's Co-operative Guild. She said that the Co-operative movement, with its 62,000,000 members and annual trade of £60,000,000, had often been called a "State within a State." In that State women had votes, they attended quarterly business meetings and voted side by side with men on questions of trade, employment and education. Women were elected as directors of Co-operative societies and also on Educational Committees connected with the Co-operative movement. And yet the prosperity of the co-operative "State" continued to increase, although in many places the women members outnumbered the men. The Co-operative Guild Women saw that when questions affecting the Co-operative movement came before Parliament the movement lost much of its power because the women had no vote. Unwise or unjust taxation was injurious to the Co-operative trade, and women were the chief sufferers by unjust taxation. Whatever taxes were put upon necessaries men did not receive larger incomes, and so women had less to spend. That very month Mr. Birrell had received Resolutions from large conferences of the Co-operative Guild members, urging that medical examination should be made compulsory under the New Education Bill, but the Resolutions were worth nothing without a vote behind them. The women who had sent up these Resolutions felt "like a crying child outside the door of a locked room, demanding entrance with no one to open it." Most of the Co-operators were married working-women. Their houses were both their workshops and their homes, and therefore Housing and public Health questions were especially important to them. Their incomes were affected by laws relating to trades, accidents, pensions and all industrial legislation that went to secure the good health of the workers. Therefore they appealed that this common right, the right of a citizen, should be granted to them and to other women.

Mrs. Watson spoke on behalf of the Scottish Christian Union of the British Women's Temperance Association, with a membership of 52,000 women. Then Mrs. Mary Bateson presented a petition for the franchise from 1,530 women graduates, amongst whom were Doctors of Letters, Science and Law in the Universities of the United Kingdom, the British Colonies and the United States.