Look to it, Mr. Gautrey, or the witchery of Christabel will "do you in the eye."
No, the electors of Peckham agreed, these Suffragettes were not the sort of women they had read of. They were neither the "disorderly," "shouting," "abusive," "unsexed," "violent" creatures, nor the "soured," "dry," and "disappointed" women they had been led to expect.
It was not merely the "enthusiast" in the Daily Mail who testified to the work that the Suffragettes were doing. Conservative newspapers, though they generally preferred to ignore the Suffragettes because, though opposing the Government, they were not supporting either the Conservative candidates or their proposals, nevertheless they allowed some of the truths that the special correspondent told them about the women's campaign to filter into their columns.
The Standard said: "These women are prepared to kill themselves with fatigue and exposure, not for the vote but for what the vote means." The By-Stander said: "The ladies' tongues have been tireless and their brains inexhaustible. Of all the assembled bodies, and their name was legion, who thronged Peckham, theirs has been the most persistent." The Pall Mall Gazette said: "Everybody seems agreed that the best speeches in the election are being made by the lady Suffragists," whilst the Daily Mail asserted that "in no contest have the Suffragettes figured so largely or done such harm to the Radical candidate."
There is a type of man who will sometimes ask a woman's advice about politics and may even admit that she is not only a better speaker than he is but knows more about public questions than he will ever know, and who yet thinks it quite tolerable that she should be forever debarred from voting, though he has had that privilege since he was twenty-one. Men of this type are usually great followers of Party, and allow their ideas of right and wrong in politics to be almost entirely dictated by the actions of the very fallible gentlemen who happen to be their Party leaders. Liberals of this type, whether editors of newspapers, journalists, Members of Parliament, or merely rank and file, had always condemned the Suffragettes because the Liberal party happened to be attacked by them.
The Suffragette opposition at Peckham caused them to be more indignant than ever, for Peckham was a Liberal seat that had been held at the last election by the great majority of 2,339 votes, and if this big majority were to be pulled down they feared that the House of Lords would be emboldened to throw out the Government's Licensing Bill which was then being debated in Parliament. It was true that, though the Liberals now spoke of this Bill as being of paramount importance, they had themselves been just as keen upon a host of other questions and had over and over again before this called upon the Suffragettes to stand aside and refrain from pressing their claim at what on each occasion they assured them was the crisis of all crises. First it had been that the Liberal Government might come safely into power that they had charged the women to wait, then that Free Trade might be put out of danger, then for the passage of the Education Bill, the Plural Voting Bill and every measure put forward. In every case they assumed that the proposal advanced by the Liberal Cabinet was the only possible solution of the problem and in spite of the differences of opinion amongst men, they maintained that no right-minded woman could conscientiously wish for any other.
When it came to the question of the Licensing Bill, the Liberal politicians declared that the sole issue of the election was between the Licensing Bill on the one hand and intemperance on the other. This was absurd, for if the Liberals wished to be rid of the Suffragette opposition, they had only to remove their veto from the Woman's Bill.
On the morning after their release from Holloway, Mrs. Pankhurst and the other ex-prisoners drove off to Peckham in brakes and paraded the constituency holding meetings at various points, and worked there incessantly until the end. A procession of their own ex-prisoners was also organised by the Suffragettes of the Women's Freedom League who were also helping to fight the Government in this election. The Liberals retorted by displaying a big stocking, blue, the Peckham Liberals colour, labelled, "since my wife turned Suffragette I can't get my stockings darned!" but this fell very flat. On polling day the Star showed its belief in the strong influence which women were exerting in the election, by making its final appeal on behalf of the Government candidate, not to the men voters but to the women of Peckham. The Suffragettes were stationed at every polling booth, and, as the voters passed in, many of those who had hitherto voted for the Liberal party handed their colours and polling cards to the women with a promise to vote against the Government on this occasion. On seeing this one of the Liberal officials became so angry that he threatened to prosecute a member of the Freedom League under the Corrupt Practices Act.
In the evening after the poll closed, Mrs. Drummond, upon whom the organisation of the Suffragettes' campaign had chiefly fallen, and who had been too busy all day even to get a meal, repaired to the Town Hall where the votes were being counted. As she stood waiting on the steps, weariness showing at last in every line of her bonnie round face and sturdy little figure, the door-keeper, invited her to rest in the entrance hall until the result was known. Presently she heard a loud burst of shouting, and a number of men, in the midst of whom was Mr. Winston Churchill, came running down the stairs from the count. She started up, eager to learn the news, but was swept out into the street in the midst of those who were impetuously rushing on. At that moment there flared out a magnesium light—red, the Conservative colour. It was known that the Government candidate had been defeated,[25] and the huge crowd outside broke into cheers. Mr. Churchill was pushed about like anyone else, and had to work his way out of the throng, but the working men seeing Mrs. Drummond there, a worker like themselves, who had been labouring strenuously amongst them during the past week, and whom they all thoroughly respected, crowded round her cheering, and as her husband's constituents did to little Scotch Maggie in Mr. Barrie's play "What Every Woman Knows," they lifted her shoulder-high, and bore her in triumph down the street. But Mrs. Drummond felt exceedingly uncomfortable in this exalted state, and, asking to be released, hurriedly sped away.