CHAPTER IX
A CROP OF BY-ELECTIONS, MARCH TO MAY, 1907

No sooner had the second Women's Parliament been concluded than Mrs. Pankhurst had hurried off by the night train to take command of the Suffragette forces against the Government at a by-election at Hexham in Northumberland, where the Liberal majority was reduced by more than a thousand votes. This election was scarcely over when it was followed, with scarcely a week's intermission, by no fewer than seven others, at six of which the Suffragettes were to the fore.

From Hexham our militant army was transferred to Stepney and then to Rutland, the smallest English County.

Writing at the beginning of the Rutland contest, the Daily News correspondent said: "Each of the three parties (the third being the Women's Social and Political Union) opened its campaign with meetings in the Rutland Division to-night." Thus recognised from the start as one of the three forces to be reckoned with in the Election, the W. S. P. U. kept its important position right through until the end. In every hamlet and village the women speakers were cordially received and their speeches were listened to with earnest attention and respect. After the meetings, men and women clustered round to ask questions and tell how, before the passing of the 1884 Reform Act which had enfranchised the agricultural labourers, in the days when voters were scarce, widows and daughters whose fathers were dead, had been frequently turned out of their farms, not because they could not pay the rent, but because they could not vote. Even to-day the people said that a woman tenant was sometimes looked upon with disfavour on that account. Though the wages of the agricultural labourers in this district were exceedingly low, there was hardly a single member of the audience who did not buy at least one badge or penny pamphlet, whilst the free leaflets were eagerly seized upon, and labourers would come hurrying across the fields to the roadside in order to secure them.

As the days went by the journeyings of the Suffragettes from meeting place to meeting place throughout the constituency became a sort of triumphal progress. We were cheerily hailed from afar by distant workers amongst the crops and by drivers of passing carts. Men, women and children ran to the cottage doors to see us pass, and everywhere we were greeted with smiles and kindly words.

Only in the towns, at Oakham, the capital, and at Uppingham, did we meet with any opposition, but here most of the working men were deeply anxious that the Liberal should be returned. Rightly or wrongly they believed in the Liberal Party, believed it to be the party of progress and the one that would stand by the poor man. Nevertheless the majority listened courteously to our arguments, and admitting at last that our policy was logical and right for us, although inconvenient to them. Many of the staunchest Liberals were even won over to go all the way with us and to help us to "keep the Liberal out."

But, whilst the majority were thus willing to listen and anxious to understand, there was also a bitterly hostile element which was inflamed by an absolutely unreasoning spirit of party antagonism, and it was well known, and quite openly stated in Oakham, that a certain well-to-do Liberal was paying a gang of youths to shout down the Suffragettes at their nightly meetings in the market place. It is always found by those who take part in political warfare that the roughest and least civilised members of society are invariably opposed to the pioneer and the reformer and usually support the Government in power, to whatever party it may belong, just as they try to "back the winner" in a race. With the additional monetary incentive to create a disturbance, this element soon rendered our market place meetings unpleasantly turbulent, with the result that the local police were kept busier than they had been for a generation, and reinforcements had to be sent in from Leicestershire in order to keep the peace. The tradesman from whom we hired the lorry that we used as a platform, now announced that he dared not let us have it in future because he had been warned, not only that the vehicle itself would be damaged, but that his windows would be broken and his shop looted. Not until we had tried without success every lorry owner in Oakham, did a man, who was storing a waggon for a farmer living many miles outside the constituency, at last come to us and say that, if we would go to the barn in the field where it was kept and fetch it out for ourselves, we might have the use of this waggon on promising to make good any damage that might be done. We agreed to this and were able to hold our meetings right on until the end of the contest, though on the last two nights very little that we said could be heard, owing to the number of horns, bells and rattles that were loudly sounded by our opponents. After these stormy meetings the police and hosts of sympathisers always escorted us home to protect us from the rowdies. Just as we reached our door there was generally a little scuffle with a band of youths who waited there to pelt us with sand and gravel as we passed in. Once inside the house, the rest of the evening was always taken up with interviewing the host of previously unknown callers, who came to ask whether we had arrived home safely, to apologise for the roughs, to express sympathy with "Votes for Women," to buy literature, badges and buttons, or to ask us to inscribe our names in autograph albums. At Uppingham, the second largest town, the hostile element was smaller than at Oakham, but its methods were more dangerous. Whilst Mary Gawthorpe was holding an open-air meeting there one evening, a crowd of noisy youths began to throw up peppermint "bull's eyes" and other hard-boiled sweets. "Sweets to the sweet," said little Mary, smiling, and continued her argument, but a pot-egg, thrown from the crowd behind, struck her on the head and she fell unconscious. She was carried away, but next day appeared again, like a true Suffragette, quite undaunted, and the incident and her plucky spirit, made her the heroine of the Election. Polling took place on June 11th, and instead of the great increase in the Government vote that had been expected the Conservative majority was nearly doubled. The figures were:

J. Gretton (C.)2,213
W. F. Lyon (L.)1,362
851