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"The Transfiguring Sword"
The Just War of the Women's Social and Political Union
By Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1997 University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8841-6
CHAPTER 1
A Rhetorical Path to Terrorism
Understanding the militancy of the English suffragettes has been problematic for scholars since the time of the movement. The most well known of contemporaneous explanations came from Sir Almroth Wright, M.D., who blamed women's participation in militancy upon the "physiological conditions" faced by the excess number of women in England. In a 1912 letter to the Times, he stated that, since there were more women of marriageable age than there were men to accommodate them, these "surplus" women faced "severe sexual restrictions" and were, therefore, "sexually embittered." This condition led to a "mental disorder" that expressed itself in the violence of militancy.
Other psychological explanations have included Samuel Hynes's reference to suffrage militancy as "mindless acts of aggression and protest" and his description of the movement's "passionate and irrational revengefulness." Hynes made the sweeping (and unsupported) claim that the "movement offered manhaters an outlet and form of expression." He provided the punch line by suggesting that England, in order to escape the suffragettes, "went to war in 1914 with apparent relief, as a husband might leave a nagging wife." For George Dangerfield, the movement was an attempt by women to regain their masculine nature; the militants were merely puppets jerked hither and yon by autocratic leaders teetering on the edge of insanity; further, the militant campaign was an expression of "pre-war lesbianism." Andrew Rosen searches in obscure places for sexual symbolism, apparently intent upon the same equation of sexual frustration and militancy first claimed by Sir Almroth Wright. When, during one protest, Christabel Pankhurst tells union members to seize the mace if they are fortunate enough to enter the House of Commons, Rosen speculates that, "perhaps, to Christabel, the mace, symbol of the authority of the House, embodied the concept of masculinity itself." He searches the words of the suffragette martyr, Emily Wilding Davison, for such terms as "ejaculates" (used, as was common at the time, in a nonsexual context to refer to sudden verbal declarations) to prove that Davison "found a quasi-sexual fulfillment in the contemplation of self-destruction." Underlying all these views is the apparent opinion that normal, mentally healthy women are never violent.
One major problem with most earlier analyses has been the tendency to see union militancy all of a piece. References are made to WSPU violence without any acknowledgment that militancy evolved into violence. One reason, too, that so many researchers have viewed the suffragettes as hysterical and their militant acts as irrational has been the tendency to view particular acts quite apart from the rhetorical exigencies that prompted them. The union escalated its protest tactics as a rhetorically motivated response to a specific series of contingencies. Beginning with purely constitutional methods, union members turned to militancy only when it became clear that the constitutional approach would remain as ineffective in their hands as it had in the hands of earlier suffragists. Similarly, the level of WSPU militancy escalated only when new conditions imposed by the suffragettes' opponents threatened to halt union progress. Militancy under the WSPU, therefore, was not a single tactic but a path forged through new territory whenever more established routes appeared blocked.
The First Act: Nominal Militancy
When Emmeline Goulden Pankhurst invited a group of women to her Manchester home on October 10, 1903, to form a new political movement, the drive for female suffrage was undergoing a revitalization. The decade prior to the founding of the Women's Social and Political Union proved to be a time of hopeful signs marred by great losses in the movement for women's suffrage. Suffrage was granted to women in New Zealand in 1893 and in South Australia in 1894. Then, in 1897, the wonderfully named Mr. Faithfull Begg introduced an English women's suffrage bill that reached its second reading and passed with a majority of seventy-one but was then "killed" before the committee stage. As the new century came in, suffrage work continued and petitions were still being signed, but the press treated the issue of women's suffrage as an extended joke and subjected serious news of suffrage efforts to a press blackout. Because of the ongoing Boer War, opponents claimed that any agitation that distracted the government while "our lads" were fighting was unpatriotic. The war against the Dutch farmers in South Africa was deeply divisive at home, fueled by inflammatory speeches against the war by David Lloyd George. When Lloyd George spoke against the war in Birmingham, native home of Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, a riot ensued that caused the death of one man and injury to ninety-seven police. Women were not peripheral to this controversial war. Displaced Boer women and children were placed in overcrowded "concentration camps" (a term devised for the occasion), and 20,000 of the 117,000 camp residents died. When concerned women in England sent Emily Hobhouse in 1901 to inspect the camps, she was detained in Capetown for deportation upon her return from the camps. The news that Hobhouse had physically resisted her guards electrified the opposition to the war and presaged the more physical tactics women would soon employ for their own political rights.
The close of this divisive war in 1902 finally left the public free to realize fully the excitement of a new century and a new monarch. For suffragists this excitement brought renewed hope that the moribund women's suffrage cause could be resurrected. The Women's Social and Political Union was established in Manchester in such an atmosphere of hope and confidence. Because of her late husband's work with the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and because of her recent work with the Manchester Labour men, Emmeline Pankhurst initially thought of founding a women's branch of the ILP, much as already existed in the Liberal Party. She had a change of heart when she discovered that women were not allowed to join the branch of the ILP that met in Pankhurst Hall, the building named for her late husband. Instead, Pankhurst founded a new organization named the Women's Social and Political Union. Open only to women, it was not affiliated with any party. Whereas women suffragists of the past had accepted reassurance of support by politicians who took no action on their behalf, the WSPU adopted the motto "Deeds Not Words."
The new union did not lack for social and political models in choosing the militant path that would later escalate into violence against property. As Sandra Holton has argued, "The militant was more than a victim of her own temper or psychology, more than a vehicle for forces beyond herself, or for processes in which she had become locked." The suffragette leaders had gleaned two basic political lessons from the political agitations of the preceding century: first, violence had been instrumental in gaining additional political rights for men (and denying political rights to women); and second, constitutional efforts had been ineffective in remedying this situation. Violent agitation in 1832 had culminated in the passing of the Electoral Reform Bill and in a radical change in the political status of women. Until that time most men and women shared equally in whatever few political rights they had. The lack of a female franchise was less apparent when the majority of men also could not vote. The Reform Bill of 1832 was worded with reference only to "male persons"; the result was that women were denied any voting rights at the very time that a male, middle-class franchise was created. When the new Electoral Reform Bill came before Parliament in 1866, some saw it as an opportunity to correct this injustice. Dr. Richard Marsden Pankhurst, a Manchester solicitor, helped John Stuart Mill draft an amendment to the Reform Bill of 1867 to enfranchise women on an equal basis with men. Massive petitions were put forward on the amendment's behalf, but the amendment did not survive the debate.
After Richard Pankhurst and Emmeline Goulden married, in 1879, they worked together to seek a redress of women's political inequality until Dr. Pankhurst's death, in 1898. One particular event in the early years of Emmeline Pankhurst's political life may have predisposed her to view a crisis as politically expedient. When the Liberals did not include women in the Franchise Reform Act of 1884, the Pankhursts founded the Women's Franchise League. In 1894 they made a final break with the Liberals, and Dr. Pankhurst became a driving force in the Independent Labour Party in Manchester. During the first years of the Pankhursts' work for the ILP in Manchester, the party faced considerable repression. Often unable to acquire halls in which to speak, the ILP took to organizing outdoor meetings, often at the popular city park of Boggart Hole Clough. On May 17, 1896, Labour speaker John Harker was issued a summons for holding a meeting in the park. More summonses followed as speakers persisted, and imprisonments began as the speakers refused to pay their fines. On Sunday, June 21, Emmeline Pankhurst spoke in the Clough, declaring her willingness to face imprisonment. When the authorities did not prosecute her, she vowed to continue speaking, claiming, "As long as I have my personal freedom, I shall go Sunday by Sunday to Boggart Hole Clough." The controversy brought large crowds to the Clough; the city council passed a bylaw forbidding any meeting in the Clough without consent of the Parks Department. On Sunday, August 16, a massive protest was held in the Clough. This sign of public support and the increase in Labour votes at an election held at the same time encouraged the home secretary to refuse approval of the bylaw. The crisis brought about by civil disobedience and the willingness to face imprisonment had forced the public officials to back down.
Such early political lessons may have been responsible for Emmeline Pankhurst's view of "human progress as having advanced through the tumultuous acts of the oppressed." Reportedly, she was also influenced by her revolutionary paternal grandfather and by a girlhood friend who descended from a French communard. As a girl, Pankhurst had often indicated her pleasure that her birthday fell on Bastille Day. Whatever her early influences, clearly Pankhurst did not view a crisis as a negative event but as an opportunity to drive a wedge into the existing political structure and thus create a space for new political participation.
Until 1905, most WSPU activity was confined to organizing in and around Manchester. When the new session of Parliament opened on February 13, 1905, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Sylvia journeyed to London. Sylvia, a woman of considerable artistic talent and social conscience, would later lead the suffrage campaign in the East End of London. The two women spent eight days lobbying Parliament members who had previously pledged suffrage support. They finally convinced Bamford Slack, who was fortunate enough to have drawn a place on the ballot, to introduce their bill. The bill was a simple one that stated that all words referring to the masculine gender in the voting qualifications should be held to include women. This bill was to be introduced on May 12, 1905. It was the second bill of the day; the first bill was one requiring that lights be placed on the back of a cart when in traffic.
On May 12, the lobbies of the Parliament were filled with women: Lancashire textile workers, National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) representatives, and WSPU members among them. They were treated to the spectacle of Parliament members stringing out the "debate" on the Roadway Lighting Bill with stories and jokes. In jovial collusion, the other members egged them on with laughter and applause. In this way, the suffrage bill was "talked out." The constitutionalist NUWSS, accustomed to such offhand treatment, politely withdrew. This was, however, the first real taste of frustration and betrayal for the WSPU members, and they were unwilling to yield easily.
Mrs. Pankhurst and a small group of women held an impromptu demonstration at the door of Parliament. Elizabeth Wolstenholm-Elmy, a famous elderly suffragist and reformer still adorned with the ringlet curls — now grey — of an earlier age, attempted to speak. The women were hustled away, first to the statue of Richard the Lion-Hearted and then to the Broad Sanctuary. A brief, indignant meeting ensued. No arrests were made, although the police took down the names of the women. Thus, peacefully, the first militant act of the WSPU took place.
Exigence One: Breaking Through the Blackout
The escalation from this only nominally militant act to actual violence was many years in coming. The first situation that early militancy was designed to meet was the continued refusal by the press to print any news about women's suffrage. On October 13, 1905, a pre-election meeting was held at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. The candidate was Winston Churchill, newly swung to the Liberal ranks, and the speech in his support was by Sir Edward Grey. Mrs. Pankhurst's oldest daughter, Christabel, attended the meeting. Considered by her mother to be a natural politician and soon to receive her LL.B., Christabel would become the primary strategist for the movement. She was accompanied to the meeting by Annie Kenney, a Lancashire factory worker of great intelligence and loyalty to the Pankhursts. In the middle of the meeting Annie Kenney rose and asked "Will the Liberal Government give votes to women?" as Christabel unfurled a "Votes for Women" banner. When Sir Edward Grey refused to answer, even upon the requested submission of the question in writing, the two women again interrupted the meeting. They were manhandled outside and restrained as they tried to speak in the streets. Deciding to force arrest, Christabel made a dry-spitting motion at a police officer. Both women were arrested; Christabel Pankhurst was sentenced to one week's imprisonment and Annie Kenney to three days'. As Christabel intended, news of their imprisonment finally broke the long silence by the newspapers on the suffrage issue. The press engaged in considerable hand-wringing over the "wickedness" of the two women and the deleterious effects their actions would have on the suffrage cause. Even such negative editorials were preferable to the usual silence on suffrage. The response to this one act made it clear that a "wonderful new weapon, the weapon of publicity and advertisement, was put into the hands of the Women's Social and Political Union, and the leaders at once saw its value." This breaking through of the press blackout also confirmed that a crisis could be manufactured in order to bring attention and action to bear on a political issue.
Far from discouraging women from joining the union, news of the incident attracted many Manchester women to the suffrage ranks. Among them was Flora Drummond, a short, stocky woman of considerable tenacity. Her bulldog features and nature, combined with her organizational talents, made her a mainstay of the union and inspired the nickname "The General." Of even greater importance to the future of the union was the decision of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence to join following the relocation of the WSPU to London in January 1906. Emmeline Pethick, who was born in prosperous circumstances, had spent a number of years in the East End involved with mission work among young women. In 1901 she married Frederick Lawrence, and it is an indication of their strong partnership that they both chose to hyphenate their last names. Once Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence had joined the union as treasurer, her husband worked closely with the suffrage women, devoting his time and money to the cause. He was truly, as one author called him, "the Prince Consort of militancy." In October 1907 the Pethick-Lawrences started the newspaper Votes for Women, which would serve as a major propaganda tool for the movement.
Exigence Two: Stone-Throwing to Force Arrest
If the need to break through the press blackout led the union to provide a newsworthy minor crisis for its initial move into militancy, the next step in militancy came as the result of the suffragettes' experience during legal protests. Early "militancy" for the WSPU had generally consisted of heckling government speakers, making speeches in occasionally inconvenient places, and attempting to deliver resolutions to the House of Commons. Although the heckling of speakers (and especially the asking of embarrassing questions) is a standard procedure in British politics, the union women found that such actions would result in their arrest and imprisonment. The suffragettes were also arrested and given outrageous sentences for making speeches of their own. Mass arrests and prison sentences were the result, too, when the WSPU passed resolutions and sent deputations with the intent of delivering these resolutions to Parliament. Well aware that English law could prohibit large meetings within the one-mile radius of Parliament, the union always sent a smaller, legal deputation to carry the resolution to the House of Commons. Supporters would follow behind, generally in small groups and at a discreet distance from the initial deputation. The women were invariably met by police — mounted and on foot — who would block their path. The women would attempt to continue forward; they would undergo a period of serious buffeting by the police; and they would then be arrested. It is interesting to note that the women would then be charged with "obstructing the police," tried in the police courts, and imprisoned in the second division, which was usually reserved for common criminals rather than political offenders.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from "The Transfiguring Sword" by Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp. Copyright © 1997 University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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