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

by E. Sylvia Pankhurst

Unfortunately it now appeared that Mr. Stanger had been informed beforehand that the closure resolution, which would prevent the talking out of the Bill, would only be accepted on condition that he, as the Bill's sponsor, would move that it be referred to a Committee of the whole House instead of passing automatically to one of the Grand Committees. Mr. Stanger had agreed to the condition and now fulfilled the promise that had been exacted, and the result was that nothing further could be done with the Bill unless the Government would provide time for its discussion.

Had the Cabinet been prepared to act honourably and to stand by the statement of their spokesman, Mr. Gladstone, the position would now have been that, if the women who wanted votes could organise a series of demonstrations which could compare with those held by men in support of the various extensions of the franchise that had already taken place, the Government would concede their demands and would either provide time for the passage into law of Mr. Stanger's Bill or introduce and put through its various stages a measure of their own framing. The Women's Social and Political Union were prepared to accept Mr. Gladstone's challenge.

When Mrs. Pankhurst and the other women had gone to prison, their comrades of the W. S. P. U., at Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's suggestion, had entered upon a week of self-denial in order to raise funds for the campaign. The thought of those who were in prison spurred on every member of the Union to renewed zeal. Some went canvassing from house to house for money. Others stood with collecting boxes at regular pitches in the street. At the Kensington High Street District Railway Station, for instance, four well known women writers, Miss Evelyn Sharpe, Miss May Sinclair, Miss Violet Hunt, and Miss Clemence Housman, were gathering in pennies all through those wintry days. Some women sold flowers, swept crossings, became pavement artists and played barrel organs. Poorer members obliged to work continuously for a living, denied themselves sugar and milk in their tea, butter on their bread, and walked to and from their work, in order to be able to give something to the funds. The result of this week of earnest effort was to be announced at a great meeting at the Albert Hall on March 19th, to advertise which a great box kite, with a flag attached, was hanging over the Houses of Parliament for a fortnight, whilst a similar flag floated over Holloway Gaol to cheer the prisoners within.

Every seat in the great Albert Hall was sold long before the day of the meeting, and hundreds of people were turned away at the doors. The vast audience was composed almost entirely of women, and there were 200 women stewards in white dresses. The platform was decorated with flowers and thronged with ex-prisoners and the officials of the Union, but as the sentences of Mrs. Pankhurst and eight of her comrades were not to expire until the following morning, the Chairman's seat which the founder of the Union should have occupied, was left vacant and in it was placed a large white card bearing the inscription "Mrs. Pankhurst's chair."

Throughout that great gathering there was a wonderful spirit of unity and not one woman there could wish in her heart, as so many millions have done, "if I had only been a man." No, they were rather like to pity those who were not women and so could not join in this great fight, for to-day it was the woman's battle. The time was gone when she must always play a minor part, applauding, ministering, comforting, performing useful functions if you will, incurring risks, too, and making sacrifices, but always being treated and always thinking of herself as a mere incident of the struggle outside the wide main stream of life. To-day this battle of theirs seemed to the women to be the greatest in the world, all other conflicts appeared minor to it. A great wave of enthusiasm had caught them up and they were ready to break out into cheers and clapping at the least excuse. Fate, in the person of the Government, had provided an incident entirely in keeping with their mood, for Christabel immediately announced that Mrs. Pankhurst and the remaining prisoners had been unexpectedly released, and Mrs. Pankhurst herself walked quietly on to the platform to take possession of the vacant chair.

Then it was a wonderful sight to see the up-springing of those thousands of women from those rows and rows of seats and tiers and tiers of boxes and galleries sloping to the roof of the great circular hall. There was a sea of waving arms and handkerchiefs and a long chorus of cheers,—with no greater welcome could any leader have been met. The founder of the Union stood there quite still in her dark grey dress, and her face, usually pale, had that strangely blanched look, which comes to prisoners. When, as the applause subsided, she stepped forward to speak to the assembled women, it was evident that she was deeply moved by their greeting, and as she told how the chief wardress had come to her cell at two o'clock that afternoon to tell her that an order had come for her immediate release, one felt that she was very tired and almost overwhelmed by the sharp contrast between that great brightly lighted hall, with its vast seething throng of human beings, and the still silence of the prison cell. She had heard, she told the women,—"for these things filter even into prison"—that the Bill had successfully passed its second reading, but she said, and all present knew that she spoke rightly, that if ever the Bill were to become an Act, women must do ten times more yet than they had ever done in the past.

"I for one, friends," Mrs. Pankhurst cried, and we knew that she was thinking of the women she had seen in prison, "I for one, looking round on the sweated and decrepit members of my sex, say that men have had control of these things long enough and that no woman with any spark of womanliness in her will consent to allow this state of things to go on any longer. We are tired of it, we want to be of use and to have the power to make the world a better place both for men and women than it is to-day." She paused then and went on to express quietly but with deep feeling her joy in this great woman's movement that a few years before she had thought she would never live to see. The old cry had been, "You will never rouse women," but she said, "we have done what they thought, and what they hoped, to be impossible; we women are roused." At those words they stopped her with their cheers.

Then Annie Kenney rose to tell the story of her first and only other visit to the Royal Albert Hall, when she had gone there to ask of the newly elected and triumphant Liberal Ministry, a pledge for the enfranchisement of her sex. That night, two years before, she had been received with cries of abuse and howled down by an audience of angry men. "There seemed to be thousands against one," she said, "but I did not mind because I knew that our action that night was like summer rain on a drooping flower; it would give new life to the woman's movement."

And now Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, our Treasurer, was to come forward to give yet one more proof that Annie Kenney's words were true. When the treasurer had imagined that Mrs. Pankhurst's chair was to be an empty one, she had planned that those present should place in it an offering of money for the cause, but now she would be able to place that offering in the founder's hands. Towards the sum that was collected there was already the £2,382 11s. 7d, which had been raised by the devotion and sacrifice of members of the Union during the week of self denial; a promise of £1,000 a year till women were enfranchised, from a lady who wished to remain anonymous, and a second £1,000 which Mrs. Lawrence herself, in conjunction with her husband, wished to give. And now it was for the audience to do their part.

Whilst the treasurer had been speaking, Mr. Lawrence had been arranging a scoring apparatus. Then, one by one, twelve women rose up in the hall and each promised to give £100. Their example was followed by numbers of others. At the same time, promise cards, filled up by members of the audience, were constantly being handed to the platform, where Mrs. Lawrence read them out. At last the sum of £7,000 had been set up, and, with a stirring call from Christabel to work at the by-elections at Peckham and Hastings in which the Union was then engaging, the meeting closed.