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

by E. Sylvia Pankhurst

I am here to take upon myself now, Sir, as I wish the Prosecution had put upon me, the full responsibility for this agitation in its present phase. I want to address you as a woman who has performed the duties of a woman, and, in addition, has performed the duties which ordinary men have to perform, by earning a living for her children, and educating them.

I want to make you realise that it is a point of honour that if you decide—as I hope you will not decide—to bind us over, that we shall not sign any undertaking, as the Member of Parliament did who was before you yesterday. Perhaps his reason for signing that undertaking may have been that the Prime Minister had given some assurance to the people he claimed to represent that something should be done for them. We have had no such assurance. So, Sir, if you decide against us to-day, to prison we must go, because we feel that we should be going back to the hopeless condition this movement was in three years ago if we consented to be bound over to keep the peace which we have never broken. If you decide to bind us over, although the Government have admitted that we are political offenders, we shall be treated as pickpockets and drunkards and I want you, if you can, as a man, to realise what that means to women like us. We are driven to do this, we are determined to go on with this agitation, because we feel in honour bound. Just as it was the duty of your forefathers, it is our duty to make this world a better place for women than it is to-day.

Now, Sir, we have not wished to waste your time in any way; we have wished to make you realise that there is another side to the case than that put before you by the Prosecution. We want you to use your power—I do not know what value there is in the legal claims that have been put before you as to your power to decide this case—but we want you, Sir, if you will, to send us to be tried in some place more suitable for the trial of political offenders than an ordinary police court. You must realise how futile it is to attempt to settle this question by binding us over to keep the peace. You have tried it; it has failed. Others have tried to do it, and have failed. If you had power to send us to prison, not for six months, but for six years, for sixteen years, or for the whole of our lives, the Government must not think that they could stop this agitation. It would go on.

Lastly, I want to draw your attention to the self-restraint which was shown by our followers on the night of the 13th, after we had been arrested. It only shows that our influence over them is very great, because I think if they had yielded to their natural impulses, there might have been a breach of the peace. They were very indignant, but our words have always been, be patient, exercise self-restraint, show our so-called superiors that the criticism of women being hysterical is not true; use no violence, offer yourselves to the violence of others. We are going to win. Our women have taken that advice; if we are in prison they will continue to take that advice.

Well, Sir, that is all I have to say to you. We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.

Members of the Women's Freedom League attempting to enter the House after the taking down of the grille, October 28th, 1908.

The angry red had faded from Mr. Curtis Bennett's face, and whilst Mrs. Pankhurst was speaking he kept his hand up to it, and at one point we saw it quiver and for a moment he hid his eyes. Some of the big burly policemen whom we knew so well and who, except in the "raids," when they were obliged to do their duty, were always so kind and jovial towards us, were openly in tears. Then Mrs. Drummond, looking paler and more serious than is her wont, rose up to speak in her turn. Her voice was a few notes thinner and higher pitched and like her words, it seemed to be stripped of all emotion and to be instinct with the clearest and most logical commonsense. Not only what she said, but her whole personality was so honest, sincere and unaffected that she seemed to add the one thing lacking to the completeness of that presentment of the great unanswerable case for Woman's Suffrage. Her concluding words were an assurance that the agitation, which was spreading and growing all over the country, would go on as before. "I can speak on good authority," she said, "for we have left everything in working order and we shall find the movement stronger than when we left it because the action which the Government have taken has fired the bosoms of women, who are determined to take up the flag that we have had to lay down to-day."

When Mrs. Drummond had finished, Mr. Curtis Bennett began speaking quite cheerfully and as though the whole affair were an amusing discussion between friends and had no unpleasant side to it. During the first part of his speech he reviewed the arguments on both sides of the case, and as he referred meanwhile to the pages on which he had taken his notes he so frequently smiled as though they recalled amusing and rather pleasant memories to him, that many people made up their minds that he was either about to state a case for a higher court, as the defendants wished, or to discharge them altogether. All at once, however, his tone changed and he began to speak hurriedly, with lowered voice and increased severity of manner, and went on to say that there could be no doubt that it was for that court and that court alone to deal with the offence for which the defendants had been summoned; and that there could be no doubt but that the handbill which the defendants circulated was liable to cause something to occur which might and probably would, end in a breach of the peace. The Chief Commissioner of Police was bound to keep Parliament Square and the vicinity free and open, and the Commissioner of Police had felt that it would be impossible to do that if crowds assembled together in order to help and to see the women "rush" the House of Commons. Therefore each of the two older defendants would be bound over in their own recognisances of £100, and, they must find two sureties in £50 each to keep the peace for twelve months, or in default must undergo three months' imprisonment. In the case of the younger defendant, her own recognisances would be £50, with two sureties of £25 each, the alternative being ten weeks' imprisonment.