Emmeline Pankhurst, aided by her daughters Sylvia and
Christabel, led the Women's Suffrage Movement in late 19th-century Britain. She and
the "suffragettes" used confrontational tactics, and went to prison repeatedly.
During World War I the movement was suspended, and in 1918, Britain became the first
Western democracy to permit some women the right to vote. (Only those over 30, and
with a property qualification.) Emmeline Pankhurst herself went on to stand as a
Conservative candidate for Parliament!...
CHAPTER I
Manchester is a city which has witnessed a great many stirring episodes, especially of a political character. Generally speaking, its citizens have been liberal in their sentiments, a defenders of free speech and liberty of opinion. But in the late sixties there occurred in Manchester one of those dreadful events that prove an exception to the rule. This was in connection with the Fenian Revolt in Ireland. There
was a Fenian riot, and the police arrested the leaders. These men were being taken to the
jail in a prison van. On the way the van was stopped and an attempt was made to rescue the
prisoners. A man fired a pistol, endeavouring to break the lock of the van door. A
policeman fell, mortally wounded, and several men were arrested and were charged with murder. I distinctly remember the riot, which I did not witness, but
which I heard vividly described by my older brother. I had been spending the afternoon
with a young playmate, and my brother had come after tea to escort me home. As we walked
through the deepening November twilight he talked excitedly of the riot, the fatal pistol
shot, and the slain policeman. I could almost see the man bleeding on the ground, while
the crowd swayed and groaned around him.
The rest of the story reveals one of those ghastly blunders which justice not infrequently makes. Although the shooting was done
without any intent to kill, the men were tried for murder and three of them were found
guilty and hanged. Their execution, which greatly excited the citizens of Manchester, was
almost the last, if not the last, public execution permitted to take place in the city. At
the time I was a boardingpupil in a school near Manchester, and I spent my week-ends at
home. A certain Saturday afternoon stands out in my memory, as on my way home from school
I passed the prison where I knew the men had been confined. I saw that a part of the
prison wall had been torn away, and in the great gap that remained were evidences of a
gallows recently removed. I was transfixed with horror, and over me there swept the sudden
conviction that that hanging was a mistake worse, a crime. It was my awakening to one of
the most terrible facts of life-that justice and judgment lie often a world apart.
I relate this incident of my formative years to illustrate the
fact that the impressions of childhood often have more to do with character and future
conduct than heredity or education. I tell it also to show that my development into an
advocate of militancy was largely a sympathetic process. I have not personally suffered
from the deprivations, the bitterness and sorrow which bring so many men and women to a
realisation of social injustice. My childhood was protected by love and a comfortable
home. Yet, while still a very young child, I began instinctively to feel that there was
something lacking, even in my own home, some false conception of family relations, some
incomplete ideal.
This vague feeling of mine began to shape itself into conviction about
the time my brothers and I were sent to school. The education of the English boy, then as
now, was considered a much more serious matter than the education of the English boy's
sister. My parents, especially my father, discussed the question of my brothers' education
as a matter of real importance. My education and that of my sister were scarcely discussed
at all. Of course we went to a carefully selected girls' school, but beyond the facts that
the head mistress was a gentlewoman and that all the pupils were girls of my own class,
nobody seemed concerned. A girl's education at that time seemed to have for its prime
object the art of "making home attractive"-presumably to migratory male
relatives. It used to puzzle me to understand why I was under such a particular obligation
to make home attractive to my brothers. We were on excellent terms of friendship, but it
was never suggested to them as a duty that they make home attractive to me. Why not.?
Nobody seemed to know.
The answer to these puzzling questions came to me unexpectedly one
night when I lay in my little bed waiting for sleep to overtake me. It was a custom of my
father and mother to make the round of our bedrooms every night before going themselves to
bed. When they entered my room that night I was still awake, but for some reason I chose
to feign slumber. My father bent over me, shielding the candle flame with his big hand. I
cannot know exactly what thought was in his mind as he gazed down at me, but I heard him
say, somewhat sadly, "What a pity she wasn't born a lad."
My first hot impulse was to sit up in bed and protest that I didn't
want to be a boy, but I lay still and heard my parents' footsteps pass on toward the next
child's bed. I thought about my father's remark for many days afterward, but I think I
never decided that I regretted my sex. However, it was made quite clear that men
considered themselves superior to women, and that women apparently acquiesced in that
belief.
I found this view of things difficult to reconcile with the fact that
both my father and my mother were advocates of equal suffrage. I was very young when the
Reform Act of 1866 was passed, but I very well remember the agitation caused by certain
circumstances attending it. This Reform Act, known as the Household Franchise Bill, marked
the first popular extension of the ballot in England since 1832. Under its terms,
householders paying a minimum of ten pounds a year rental were given the Parliamentary
vote. While it was still under discussion in the House of Commons, John Stuart Mill moved
an amendment to the bill to include women householders as well as men. The amendment was
defeated, but in the act as passed the word "man," instead of the usual
"male person," was used. Now, under another act of Parliament it had been
decided that the word "man" always included "woman" unless otherwise
specifically stated. For example, in certain acts containing rate-paying clauses, the
masculine noun and pronoun are used throughout, but the provisions apply to women
rate-payers as well as to men. So when the Reform Bill with the word "man" in it
became law many women believed that the right of suffrage had actually been bestowed upon
them. A tremendous amount of discussion ensued, and the matter was finally tested by a
large number of women seeking to have their names placed upon the register as voters. In
my city of Manchester 3,924 women, out of a total of 4,215 possible women voters, claimed
their votes and their claim was defended in the law courts by eminent lawyers, including
my future husband, Dr. Pankhurst. Of course the women's claim was settled adversely in
the courts, but the agitation resulted in a strengthening of the woman-suffrage agitation
all over the country.
I was too young to understand the precise nature of the affair, but I
shared in the general excitement. From reading newspapers aloud to my father I had
developed a genuine interest in politics, and the Reform Bill presented itself to my young
intelligence as something that was going to do the most wonderful good to the country. The
first election after the bill became law was naturally a memorable occasion. It is chiefly
memorable to me because it was the first one in which I ever participated. My sister and I
had just been presented with new winter frocks, green in colour, and made alike, after the
custom of proper British families. Every girl child in those days wore a red flannel
petticoat, and when we first put on our new frocks I was struck with the fact that we were
wearing red and green-the colours of the Liberal party. Since our father was a Liberal, of
course the Liberal party ought to carry the election, and I conceived a brilliant scheme
for helping its progress. With my small sister trotting after me, I walked the better part
of a mile to the nearest polling-booth. It happened to be in a rather rough factory
district, but we did not notice that. Arrived there, we two children picked up our green
skirts to show our scarlet petticoats, and brimful of importance, walked up and down
before the assembled crowds to encourage the Liberal vote. From this eminence we were
shortly snatched by outraged authority in the form of a nursery-maid. I believe we were
sent to bed into the bargain, but I am not entirely clear on this point.
I was fourteen years old when I went to my first suffrage meeting.
Returning from school one day, I met my mother just setting out for the meeting, and I
begged her to let me go along. She consented, and without stopping to lay my books down I
scampered away in my mother's wake. The speeches interested and excited me, especially the
address of the great Miss Lydia Becker, who was the Susan B. Anthony of the English
movement, a splendid character and a truly eloquent speaker. She was the secretary of the
Manchester committee, and I had learned to admire her as the editor of the Women's
Suffrage Journal, which came to my mother every week. I left the meeting a conscious
and confirmed suffragist.
I suppose I had always been an unconscious suffragist. With my
temperament and my surroundings I could scarcely have been otherwise..
CHAPTER IV
I HAD called upon women to join me in striking at the Government
through the only thing that governments are really very much concerned about-property-and
the response was immediate. Within a few days the newspapers rang with the story of the
attack made on letter boxes in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, and half a dozen
other cities. In some cases the boxes, when opened by postmen, mysteriously burst into
flame; in others the letters were destroyed by corrosive chemicals; in still others the
addresses were rendered illegible by black fluids. Altogether it was estimated that over
5,000 letters were completely destroyed and many thousands more were delayed in transit.
It was with a deep sense of their gravity that these letter-buming
protests were undertaken, but we felt that something drastic must be done
in order to destroy the apathy of the men of England who view with indifference the
suffering of women oppressed by unjust laws. As we pointed out, letters, precious though
they may be, are less precious than human bodies and souls. This fact was universally
realised at the sinking of the Titanic. Letters and valuables
disappeared forever, but their loss was forgotten in the far more terrible loss of the
multitude of human lives. And so, in order to call attention to greater crimes against
human beings, our letter bumings continued.
In only a few cases were the offenders apprehended, and one of the few
women arrested was a helpless cripple, a woman who could move about only in a wheeled
chair. She received a sentence of eight months in the first division, and, resolutely
hunger striking, was forcibly fed with unusual brutality, the prison doctor deliberately
breaking one of her teeth in order to insert a gag. In spite of her disabilities and her
weakness the crippled girl persisted in her hunger strike and her resistance to prison
rules, and within a short time had to be released. The excessive sentences of the other
pillar box destroyers resolved themselves into very short terms because of the resistance
of the prisoners, every one of whom adopted the hunger strike.
Having shown the Government that we were in deadly earnest when we
declared that we would adopt guerrilla warfare, and also that we would not remain in
prison, we announced a truce in order that the Government might have full opportunity to
fulfil their pledge in regard to a woman suffrage amendment to the Franchise Bill. We did
not, for one moment, believe that Mr. Asquith would willingly keep his word. We knew that
he would break it if he could, but there was a bare chance that he would not find this
possible. However, our principal reason for declaring the truce was that we believed that
the Prime Minister would find a way of evading his promise, and we were determined that
the blame should be placed, not on militancy, but on the shoulders of the real traitor. We
reviewed the history of past suffrage bills: In 1908 the bill had passed its second
reading by a majority of 179; and then Mr. Asquith had refused to allow it to go on; in
1910 the Conciliation Bill passed its second reading by a majority of 110, and again Mr.
Asquith blocked its progress, pledging himself that if the bill were re-introduced in
1911, in a form rendering it capable of free amendment, it would be given full facilities
for becoming law; these conditions were met in 1911, and we saw how the bill, after
receiving the increased majority of 167 votes, was torpedoed by the introduction of a
Government manhood suffrage bill. Mr. Asquith this time had pledged himself that the bill
would be so framed that a woman suffrage amendment could be added, and he further pledged
that in case such an amendment was carried through its second reading, he would allow it
to become a part of the bill. Just exactly how the Government would manage to
wriggle out of their promise was a matter of excited speculation.
All sorts of rumours were flying about, some hinting at the resignation
of the Prime Minister, some suggesting the possibility of a general election, others that
the amended bill would carry with it a forced referendum on women's suffrage. It was also
said that the intention of the Government was to delay the bill so long that, after it was
passed in the House, it would be excluded from the benefits of the Parliament Acts,
according to which a bill, delayed of passage beyond the first two years of the life of a
Parliament, has no chance of being considered by the Lords. In order to become a law
without the sanction of the House of Lords, a bill must pass three times through the House
of Commons. The prospect of a woman suffrage bill doing that was practically nil.
To none of the rumours would Mr. Asquith give specific denial, and in
fact the only positive utterance he made on the subject of the Franchise Bill was that he
considered it highly improbable that the House would pass a woman suffrage amendment. In
order to discourage woman suffrage sentiment in the House, Mr. Lloyd-George and Mr. Lewis
Harcourt again busied themselves with spreading pessimistic prophecies of a Cabinet split
in case an amendment was carried. No other threat, they well knew, would so terrorize the
timid back bench Liberals, who, in addition to their blind party loyalty, stood in fear of
losing their seats in the general election which would follow such a split. Rather than
risk their political jobs they would have sacrificed any principle. Of course the hint of
a Cabinet split was pure buncombe, and it deceived few of the members. But it established
very clearly one thing, and this was that Mr. Asquith's promise that the House should be
left absolutely free to decide the suffrage issue, and that the Cabinet stood ready to bow
to the decision of the House was never meant to be fulfilled.
The Franchise Bill unamended, by its very wording, specifically denied
the right of any woman to vote. Sir Edward Grey moved an amendment deleting from the bill
the word male, thus leaving room for a women's suffrage amendment. Two such amendments
were moved, one providing for adult suffrage for men and women, and the other providing
full suffrage for women householders and wive of householders. The latter postponed the
voting age of women to twentyfive years, instead of the men's twenty-one. On January 24th,
1913, debate on the first of the amendments was begun. A day and a half had been allotted
to consideration of Sir Edward Grey's amendment, which if carried would leave the way
clear for consideration of the other two, to each of which one-third of a day was
allotted.
We had arranged for huge meetings to be held every day during the
debates, and on the day before they were to open we sent a deputation of working women,
led by Mrs. Drummond and Miss AnnieKenney, to interview Mr. Lloyd-George and Sir Edward Grey. We had asked
Mr. Asquith to receive the deputation, but, as usual, he refused. The deputation consisted
of the two leaders, four cotton mill operatives from Lancashire, four workers in sweated
trades of London, two pit brow lassies, two teachers, two trained nurses, one shop
assistant, one laundress, one boot and shoe worker and one domestic worker twenty in all,
the exact number specified by Mr Lloyd-George. Some hundreds of working women escorted the
deputation to the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and waited
anxiously in the street to hear the result of the audience.
The result was, of course, barren. Mr. Lloyd George glibly repeated his
confidence in the "great opportunity" afforded by the Franchise Bill, and Sir
Edward Grey, reminding the women of the divergence of view held by the members of Cabinet
on the suffrage question, assured them that their best opportunity for success lay in an
amendment to the present bill. The women spoke with the greatest candour to the two
ministers and questioned them sharply as to the integrity of the Prime Minister's pledge
to accept the amendments, if passed. To such depth of infamy had English politics sunk
that it was possible for women openly to question the plighted word of the King's chief
Minister! Mrs. Drummond, who stands in awe of no human being, in plain words invited the
slippery Mr. Lloyd-George to clear his own character from obloquy. In the closing words of
her speech she put the whole matter clearly up to him, saying: "Now, Mr.
Lloyd-George, you have doggedly stuck to your old age pensions, and the insurance act, and
secured them, and what you have done for these measures you can do also for the
women."
The House met on the following afternoon to debate Sir Edward Grey's
permissive amendment, but no sooner had the discussion opened than a veritable bombshell
was cast into the situation. Mr. Bonar Law arose and asked for a ruling on the
constitutionality of a woman's suffrage amendment to the bill as framed. The Speaker, who,
besides acting as the presiding officer of the House, is its official parliamentarian,
replied that, in his opinion, such an amendment would make a huge difference in the bill,
and that he would be obliged, at a later stage of the debates, to consider carefully
whether, if carried, any woman suffrage amendment would not so materially alter the bill
that it would have to be withdrawn. In spite of this sinister pronouncement, the House
continued to debate the Grey amendment, which was ably supported by Lord Hugh Cecil, Sir
John Rolleaton, and others.
During the intervening week-end holiday two Cabinet councils were held,
and when the House met on Monday the Prime Minister called upon the Speaker for his
ruling. The Speaker declared that, in his opinion, the passage of any one of the woman
suffrage amendments would so alter the scope of the Franchise Bill as practically to
create a new bill, because the measure, as it was framed, did not have for
its main object the bestowal of the franchise on a hitherto excluded class. Had it been so
framed a woman suffrage amendment would have been entirely proper. But the main object of
the bill was to alter the qualification, or the basis of registration for a Parliamentary
vote. It would increase the male electorate, but only as an indirect result of the changed
qualifications. An amendment to the bill removing the sex barrier from the election laws
was not, in the Speaker's opinion, a proper one.
The Prime Minister then announced the intentions
of the Cabinet, which were to withdraw the Franchise Bill and to refrain from introducing,
during that session, a plural voting bill. Mr. Asquith blandly admitted that his pledge in
regard to women's suffrage had been rendered incapable of fulfilment, and he said that he
felt constrained to give a new pledge to take its place. There were only two that could be
given. The first was that the Government should bring in a bill to enfranchise women, and
this the Government would not do. The second was that the Government agree to give full
facilities as to time, during the next session of Parliament, to a private member's bill,
so drafted as to be capable of free amendment. This was the course that the Government had
decided to adopt. Mr. Asquith had the effrontery to say in conclusion that he thought that
the House would agree that he had striven and had succeeded in giving effect, both in
letter and in spirit, to every undertaking which the Government had given.
Two members only, Mr. Henderson and Mr. Keir Hardie had the courage to
stand up on the floor of the House and denounce the Government's treachery, for treachery
it unquestionably was. Mr. Asquith had pledged his sacred honour to introduce a bill that
would be capable of an amendment to include women's suffrage, and he had framed a bill
that could not be so amended. Whether he had done the thing deliberately, with the plain
intention of selling out the women, or whether ignorance of Parliamentary rules accounted
for the failure of the bill was immaterial. The bill need not have been drawn in
ignorance. The fount of wisdom represented by Mr. Speaker could have been consulted at the
time the bill was under construction quite as easily as when it had reached the debating
stage. Our paper said editorially, representing and perfectly expressing our member's
views: "Either the Government are so ignorant of Parliamentary procedure that they
are unfit to occupy any position of responsibility, or else they are scoundrels of the
worst kind."
I am inclined to think that the verdict of posterity will lean towards
the later conclusion. If Mr. Asquith had been a man of honour he would have re-framed the
Franchise Bill in such a way that it could have included a suffrage amendment, or else he
would have made amends for his stupendous blunder-if it was a blunder-by introducing a
Government measure for women's suffrage. He did neither, but disposed of th( matter by
promising facilities for a private member' bill which he knew, and which everybody knew,
could not possibly pass.
There was no chance for a private member's bill even with facilities,
because of a number of reasons but principally because the torpedoing of the Conciliation
Bill had destroyed utterly the spirit of conciliation in which Conservatives, Liberals and
Radicals in the House of Commons, and militant and non-militant women throughout the
Kingdom had set aside their differences of opinion and agreed to come together on a
compromise measure. When the second Conciliation Bill, of 1911, was under discussion, Lord
Lytton had said: "If this bill does not go through, the woman suffrage movement will
not be stopped, but the spirit of conciliation of which this bill is an expression will be
destroyed, and there will be war throughout the country, raging, tearing, fierce, bitter
strife, though nobody wants it."
Lord Lytton's words were prophetic. At this last brazen piece of
trickery on the part of the Government the country blazed with bitter wrath, All the
suffrage societies united in calling for a Government measure for women's suffrage to be
introduced without delay. The idle promise of facilities for a private member's bill was
rejected with contumely and scorn. The Liberal women's executive committee met, and a
strong effort was made to pass a resolution threatening the withdrawal from party work of
the entire federation, but this failed and the executive merely passed a feeble resolution
of regret.
The membership of the Women's Liberal Federation was, at that time,
close to 200,000, and if the executive had passed the strong resolution, refusing to do
any more work for the party until a Government measure had been introduced, the Government
would have been forced to yield. They could not have faced the country without the support
of the women. But these women, many of them, were wives of men in the service, the paid
service of the Liberal Party. Many of them were wives of Liberal members. They lacked the
courage, or the intelligence, or the insight, to declare war as a body on the Government.
A large number of women, and also many men, did resign from the Liberal Party, but the
defections were not serious enough to affect the Government.
The militants declared, and proceeded instantly to carry out,
unrelenting warfare. We announced that either we must have a Government measure, or a
Cabinet split-those men in the Cabinet calling themselves suffragists going out--or we
would take up the sword again, never to lay it down until the enfranchisement of the women
of England was won.
It was at this time, February, 1913, less than two years ago as I write
these words, that militancy, as it is now generally understood by the public
began-militancy in the sense of continued, destructive, guerilla warfare against the
Government through injury to private property. Some property had been destroyed before
this time, but the attacks were sporadic, and were meant to be in the nature of a warning
as to what might become a settled policy. Now we indeed lighted the torch, and we did it
with the absolute conviction that no other course was open to us. We had tried every other
measure, as I am sure that 1 have demonstrated to my readers, and our years of work and
suffering and sacrifice had taught us that the Government would not yield to right and
justice, what the majority of members of the House of Commons admitted was right and
justice, but that the Government would, as other govemments invariably do, yield to
expediency. Now our task was to show the Government that it was expedient to yield to the
women's just demands. In order to do that we had to make England and every department of
English life insecure and unsafe. W'e had to make English law a failure and the courts
farce comedy theatres; we had to discredit the Government and Parliament in the eyes of
the world; we had to spoil English sports, hurt business, destroy valuable property,
demoralise the world of society, shame the churches, upset the whole orderly conduct of
life-
That is, we had to do as much of this guerilla warfare as the people of
England would tolerate. When they came to the point of saying to the Government:
"Stop this, in the only way it can be stopped, by giving the women of England
representation," then we should extinguish our torch.
Americans, of all people, ought to see the logic of our reasoning.
There is one piece of American oratory, beloved of schoolboys, which has often been quoted
from militant platforms. In a speech now included among the classics of the English
language your great statesman, Patrick Henry, summed up the causes that led to the
American Revolution. He said: 'Ve have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have
supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves at the foot of the throne, and it has all been
in vain. We must fight-I repeat it, sir, we must fight."
Patrick Henry, remember, was advocating killing people, as well as
destroying private property, as the proper means of securing the political freedom of men.
The Suffragettes have not done that, and they never will. In fact the moving spirit of
militancy is deep and abiding reverence for human life. In the latter course of our
agitation I have been called upon to discuss our policies with many eminent men,
politicians, literary men, barristers, scientists, clergymen. One of the last named, a
high dignitary of the Church of England, told me that while he was a convinced suffragist,
he found it impossible to justify our doing wrong that right might follow. I said to him:
'Ye are not doing wrong-we are doing right in our use of revolutionary methods against
private property. It is our work to restore thereby true values, to emphasise the value of
human rights against property rights. You are well aware, sir, that property has assumed a
value in the eyes of men, and the eyes of the law, that it ought never to claim. It is
placed above all human values. The lives and health and happiness, and even the virtue of
women and children-that is to say, the race itself-are being ruthlessly sacrificed to the
god of property every day of the world."
To this my reverend friend agreed, and I said: "If we women are
wrong in destroying private property in order that human values may be restored, then I
say, in all reverence, that it was wrong for the Founder of Christianity to destroy
private property, as He did when He lashed the money changers out of the Temple and when
He drove the Gaderene swine into the sea."
It was absolutely in this spirit that our women went forth to war. In
the first month of guerilla warfare an enormous amount of property was damaged and
destroyed. On January 31st a number of putting greens were burned with acids; on February
7th and 8th telegraph and telephone wires were cut in several places and for some hours
all communication between London and Glasgow were suspended; a few days later windows in
various of London's smartest clubs were broken, and the orchid houses at Kew were wrecked
and many valuable blooms destroyed by cold. The jewel room at the Tower of London was
invaded and a showcase broken. The residence of H. R. H. Prince Christian and Lambeth
Palace, seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, were visited and had windows broken. The
refreshment house in Regents Park was burned to the ground on February 12th and on
February 18th a country house which was being built at Walton-on-the-Hill for Mr.
Lloyd-George was partially destroyed, a bomb having been exploded in the early morning
before the arrival of the workmen....
Source:
Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story (N.Y.: Hearst International Library, 1914,
Kraus Reprints, 1971), pp. 3-9, 270-283.
Online at The Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/myownstory00pankuoft/page/n10
This text is part of the Internet
Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and
copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright.
Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational
purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No
permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook.
© Paul Halsall, October 1998, updated January 2023
