My entrance into the House of Commons was not, as some thought, in the nature of a revolution. It was simply evolution. It is interesting how it came about. My husband was the one who started me off on this downward career—from home to the House. If I have helped the cause of women, he is the one to thank—not me. He is a strange and remarkable man. First, it was strange to urge his wife to take up public life, especially as he is a most domesticated creature; but the truth is, he is a born social reformer. He has avoided the pitfalls which so many well-to-do men fall into. He doesn’t think that you can right wrongs with philanthropy. He realises that you must go to the bottom of the causes of wrongs and not simply gild over the top. For eleven years I had helped him with his work at Plymouth. Mine was the personal side. I found out the wrongs and he tried to right them. It was a wonderful and happy combination, and I often wish that it was still going on. However, I am not here to tell you of his work, but it is interesting in so far as it shows you how it came about that I stood for Parliament at all. Unless he had been the kind of man that he was, I don’t believe that the first woman Member of the oldest Parliament in the world would have come from Plymouth—and that would have been a pity.
Plymouth is an ideal port to sail from or to. It has bidden “God Speed” to so many voyagers. I felt that I was embarking on a voyage of faith, but when I arrived at my destination some of the Honourable Members looked upon me more as a pirate than a Pilgrim! A woman in the House of Commons! It was almost enough to have broken up the House. I don’t blame them, but it was as hard on the woman as it was on them. Pioneers may be picturesque figures, but they are often rather lonely ones. I must say though, for the House of Commons, they bore their shock with dauntless decency. No body of men could have been kinder and fairer than they were. When you hear people over here trying to run down England, please remember that England first gave the vote to women, and that the men of England welcomed an American-born woman in the House with a fairness and justice which this woman, at least, will never forget.
Different Members received me in different ways. I shall never forget a Scottish Labour man coming up to me, after I had been in the House a little time, and telling me that I wasn’t a bit the sort of woman he thought I was going to be; and on being pressed as to what kind of woman he thought I would be, said, “I’ll not tell you that, but I know now that you are an ordinary, homely kind of woman”; and he has proved it since by often asking my advice on domestic questions. Then the Irishman—an Irish Member once said to me, “I don’t know what you are going to speak about, but I am here to back you.” The last was a regular old Noah’s Ark man, a typical English Squire type. After two years and a half of never agreeing on any point with me, he remarked to someone that I “was a very stupid woman, but he must add, a very attractive one,” and he feared I was a thoroughly honest social reformer. I might add that, being the first woman, I had to take up many causes which no one would call exactly popular. I also had to go against the prejudice of generations, but I must say their courtesy has never failed, though my Parliamentary manners must have been somewhat of a trial.
Now I must leave the more personal side and get to what it is all about, and why we are here.
Some women have always been in politics, and not done badly either. It was when we had the Lancastrian kings that it was said that kings were made by Act of Parliament—they ruled by means of Parliament. Then Henry VIII accepted the principle of the Lancastrians to rule by Parliament, but he used that principle in an entirely different way. He made Parliament the engine of his will, he pressed or frightened it into doing anything he wished. Under his guidance Parliament defied and crushed all other powers spiritual and temporal, and he did things which no king or Parliament had ever attempted to do, things unheard of and terrible. Then Elizabeth came along. It is true she scolded her Parliaments for meddling with matters with which, in her opinion, they had no concern, and more than once soundly rated the Speaker of the Commons, but she never carried her quarrels too far, and was able to end her disputes by clever compromise; in other words, she never let Parliament down, and that is what I don’t believe any wise woman will do, in spite of the fears of some of the men.
Now why are we in politics? What is it all about? Something much bigger than ourselves. Schopenhauer was wrong in nearly everything he wrote about women—and he wrote a lot—but he was right in one thing. He said, in speaking of women, “The race is to her more than the individual,” and I believe that it is true. I feel somehow we do care about the race as a whole; our very natures makes us take a forward vision. There is no reason why women should look back. Mercifully, we have no political past; we have all the mistakes of one-sex legislation, with its appalling failures, to guide us. We should know what to avoid. It is no use blaming the men—we made them what they are—and now it is up to us to try and make ourselves—the makers of men—a little more responsible. We realise that no one sex can govern alone. I believe that one of the reasons why civilisation has failed so lamentably is that it has had one-sided government. Don’t let us make the mistake of ever allowing that to happen again. I can conceive of nothing worse than a man-governed world—except a woman-governed world—but I can see the combination of the two going forward, and making civilisation, more worthy of the name of civilisation based on Christianity, not on force—a civilisation based on justice and mercy. I feel men have a greater sense of justice, and we of mercy. They must borrow our mercy and we must use their justice.
We are new brooms. Let us see that we sweep the right rooms. Personally, I feel that every woman should take an active part in local government. I don’t mean by that, that every woman should go in for a political career—that, of course, would be absurd; but you can take an active part in local government without going in for a political career. You can be certain when casting your vote that you are casting it for what seems nearest right—for what seems more likely to help the majority and not to bolster up an organised minority. There is a lot to be done in local politics, and it is a fine apprenticeship for central government; it is very practical, but I think that, although practical, it is too near to be attractive. The things that are far away are more apt to catch our imagination than the ones which are just under our noses, and then, they are often less disagreeable.
Political development is like all other development. We must begin with ourselves, our own consciousness, and clean out our own hearts before we take on the job of putting others straight. So with politics. If we women put our hands to local politics, we must begin with the foundations. After all, central governments only echo local ones; the politician in Washington, if he is a wise man, will always have one eye on his constituency. Let us make that constituency so clean, so straight, so high in its purpose, that the man from home will not dare to take a small, limited view about any question, be it a national or an international one. You must remember that what women are up against is not what they see, but the unseen forces. We are up against generations and generations of prejudice. Ever since Eve ate the apple—but I would like to remind you, and all men, why she ate the apple. It was not simply because it was good for food or pleasant to the eyes: it was from a tree whose fruit would make one wise—“She took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave unto her husband with her and he did eat.” We have no record of Adam murmuring against the fruit—of his doing anything but eat it with docility. In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on woman—however, we will leave Adam.
Ever since woman’s consciousness has looked beyond the material, man’s consciousness has feared her vaguely; he has gone to her for inspiration, he has relied on her for all that is best and most ideal in his life, yet by sheer material force he has limited her. The Western man has, without knowing it, Westernised the harem mind of the East. I don’t believe he knows it yet, so we must break it to him gently. We must go on being his guide, his mother, and his better half. But we must prove to him that we are a necessary half, not only in private, but in political life. The best way that we can do that is to show him that our ambitions are not personal. Let men see that we desire a better, safer, and cleaner world for our children and their children, and that we believe that it is only by doing our bit, by facing unclean things with cleanliness, by facing wrongs with right, by going fearlessly into all things that may be disagreeable, that we will, somehow, make this a little better world. I don’t know that we are going to do this—I don’t say that women will change the world, but I do say that they can if they want to. Coming, as I do, from the Old World which has seen a devastating war, I cannot face the future without this hope—that the women of all countries will do their duty and raise a generation of men and women who will look upon war and all that leads to it with as much horror as we now look upon a cold-blooded murder. If we want this new world, we can get it only by striving for it; and the real struggle will be within ourselves, to put out of our hearts and of our thoughts, all that makes for war, hate, envy, greed, pride, force, and material ambition.