by Simon Webb
Just as in the aftermath of the 2011 riots, it was decided that sharp sentences would deter anybody in the future who might be minded to take to the streets and create trouble. Almost all those arrested in Liverpool during the first wave of rioting were convicted of public order offences and sentenced to prison terms. The vans leaving the courts and taking the convicted men to Walton Prison had been assigned an escort of 30 hussars, mounted troops who rode alongside the prison vans to discourage any escapes or attempts to free the men. Angry crowds blocked the way of the vans and bottles and stones began to be thrown at the soldiers. Some of the more daring protesters grabbed at the reins of the cavalry. An officer gave the order to open fire and five men fell to the ground wounded. Two of them, Michael Prendegast and John Sutcliffe, died almost at once, Sutcliffe having been shot in the head twice.
The deaths of the two young men in Liverpool, both of whom were in their twenties, seemed to bring the city to its senses. The government capitulated to the demands of the strikers and the men returned to work. There was a sound tactical reason for the government of Herbert Asquith to capitulate in this way. The fact that the railways had ground to a halt in many places meant, in effect, that it was impossible to move troops from one district to another. There was little chance of bringing reinforcements to where they were most needed. Churchill summed the case up with his usual pithiness, by stating bluntly, ‘They have beaten us!’
The disturbances in Liverpool were not the worst that summer. In the Welsh town of Llanelli, troops also opened fire on strikers and in the resulting chaos, six people died. In Tredegar, in South Wales, the first anti-Jewish pogrom in Britain since the Middle Ages took place. Elements of the Somerset Light Infantry and the Worcester Regiment restored order by using bayonet charges through the streets. Cavalry were also used.
While the disorders in the provinces continued, the capital became an armed camp, with troops pouring into London from the main army bases. Hyde Park and other central London parks were given over to the military, and during that summer over 12,000 soldiers were quartered in London. This was a show of force, designed to remind people that the government was backed, ultimately, by the power of guns and bayonets. Soldiers guarded railway stations and patrolled the lines.
It is perhaps hardly surprising that during this particular summer – when the government was struggling desperately to control the streets and prevent what some politicians feared was the precursor to a general workers’ uprising – discussing the finer details of the franchise was not at the forefront of the minds of the Prime Minister or Home Secretary.
There is no doubt at that Herbert Asquith, the Prime Minister from 1908 onwards, was personally opposed to granting women the vote, but in fairness to him, it must be observed that he had much on his plate during those years of suffragette militancy. We have looked at some of the problems – industrial action and rioting – which appeared at the time very much like an incipient workers’ revolution. It is now time to ask ourselves whether Asquith could actually have given women the vote before 1914, even had he wished to do so.
The Liberal governments from 1905 to 1914 found it very hard to push through some of their legislation, even on subjects they felt very strongly about. This was not fully appreciated at the time and has been all but forgotten today. At the election held in early 1906, the Liberals defeated the Conservatives, gaining 400 seats, compared to the 157 which the Conservatives held. It was a stunning landslide victory and if ever a government in twentieth-century Britain could be said to enjoy a strong mandate, that government was Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s administration. The House of Lords, though, was still overwhelmingly dominated by unelected Conservative peers and they were determined to sabotage any Liberal government’s reforms of which they disapproved. This obstructionism began with the blocking of the 1906 Education Bill and continued until crisis point was reached in 1909, with the rejection of Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’.
The House of Lords had at this time complete power to meddle in, by either amending or rejecting, any of the legislation coming from the lower chamber. In 1893, for example, the Lords had rejected an Irish Home Rule Bill and there had been nothing at all that the government of the day could do about it. The House of Lords saw it as their duty to oppose any radical changes. When Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George tried to introduce new taxes to pay for Old Age Pensions and other benefits for the poor, the House of Lords refused to pass the budget.
Given the reactionary and intransigent nature of the Upper House in the early part of the twentieth century, we have to ask how they would have reacted to a bill which promised to widen the franchise in this country and give the vote to working-class people or women. The answer is, of course, that they would probably have rejected such a proposal outright. This situation, with a House of Commons unable to rule effectively, led to the greatest constitutional crisis of the twentieth century, which resulted in two general elections in one year; plans to abolish the House of Lords; and even a threat to the institution of the monarchy itself.
It is beyond the scope of the present book to explore this episode in depth and it is probably sufficient to remind readers that between their coming to power in 1905 and the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, it would very likely have been impossible for the Liberal government to legislate in favour of female suffrage, even had they wished to do so. From 1911 onwards, when they might have been able to extend the franchise, the government’s hands were full with other and more desperately urgent matters. Not only that, the actions of the suffragettes themselves ensured that the government could not make any concessions without appearing foolish and weak.
The crisis of 1911, involving widespread strikes and fierce rioting, the likes of which had not been seen in England for a century or more, was bad, but it was not the worst threat facing the government. No sooner had the ‘Great Unrest’ quietened down a little, than Asquith found the nation quite literally on the verge of civil war.
The civil disorder and industrial unrest had been serious, but an even greater menace to the stability of the United Kingdom was looming. This centred around the demands made in Ireland for Home Rule, and a government of their own in Dublin. The ‘Irish Question’ had been a thorn in the side of successive British governments for many years. The Liberal government led by Herbert Asquith decided to resolve the matter by granting self-government to this predominantly Catholic island, which had for years been an integral part of the United Kingdom. This did not please the Protestants in Ulster, who threatened to fight such a move with armed force. Thousands of rifles were smuggled to Ireland and senior army officers openly sympathised with the Protestants. The Irish Nationalists were also running guns into the country and preparing to face their opponents in open warfare.
In 1913 and 1914, at the height of the suffragette campaign, the government was therefore faced with the very real prospect of civil war in Ireland, combined with mutiny in the army and an uncertainty that officers would obey orders from London. There could hardly have been a more serious crisis than the threat of civil war and the fragmentation of the United Kingdom, and so it is not surprising that Asquith and his cabinet focused the whole of their attention on this in 1913 and early 1914, rather than tackling the less urgent question of how and when to extend the franchise.
As if these domestic difficulties were not enough, there was also the fact that from 1905 onwards, Britain had been engaged in an arms race with Germany. This entailed both nations frantically rushing to build bigger and better battleships known as Dreadnoughts, a contest associated with the rise of Germany as an industrial and colonial power and the consequent menace, as it was then perceived, to Britain’s strategic interests. In 1902 Lord Selborne, First Lord of the Admiralty, said, ‘If the German Fleet becomes superior to ours, the German Army can conquer this country’. This mistrust of, and rivalry with, Germany grew steadily during the Edwardian Era, culminating in the war between Britain and Germany which began in
1914.
Fear of Germany and, in particular, an invasion of Britain by Germany was a popular theme in books and newspapers in the early part of the century. Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands in 1903 and William Le Queux’s The Invasion of 1910 both dealt with invasions of this country by Germany. During the Agadir crisis of 1911 war with Germany very nearly became a reality, with the British Atlantic Fleet being ordered to the English Channel in a sabre-rattling exercise.
We have looked at some of the major problems facing the British government in the years of suffragette militancy, which ran roughly from 1905 to 1914. There were many other difficulties at that time, all of which occupied the minds of the prime minister and his cabinet far more than the finer points of equal or universal suffrage. Something further to consider is that the problems facing the administrations of those years often involved the threat of force by factions who wished to get their own way. No government can afford at such times to be seen as weak and vulnerable to pressure. As soon as the suffragettes began to use violence in pursuance of their cause, they doomed that cause irrevocably. Surrendering to the menace of bombs and arson would, to give one example, have encouraged the paramilitary forces mustering in Ireland to challenge even more vigorously the government in London. Making the government appear weak and apt to surrender to the threat of violence, would have given an unfortunate message to others hoping to force the hand of Asquith’s administration.
The portrait of the Edwardian Age, which has been outlined above, may be unfamiliar to many readers. We tend, as already remarked, to see Britain between Victoria’s death in 1901 and the outbreak of war in 1914 as a country at the height of imperial power, a nation enjoying stability and peace. In a sense, it was, but only by direct comparison with the slaughter of the trenches on the Western Front and the disruption of the world war which brought that period of British history to an end. Because of this, we have a distorted idea of how the suffragettes fitted into the scheme of things. We often think of them as radicals fighting against the stultifying complacency of a well-ordered and self-satisfied society.
According to this perception, a stubborn and reactionary government refused to take heed of the legitimate demands of disenfranchised women and so they were compelled to take direct action. The reality was that the governments of the day were fighting desperately to preserve peace and order, while simultaneously doing their best to raise the standard of living for average working men and women. They did this while fending off a succession of crises, some of which could have resulted in catastrophe for the country.
From the safe and comfortable perspective of the twenty-first century, the question of women’s votes appears to be an absurdly simple one: all that the prime minister of the day had to do was pass a law giving women the vote. In fact, as we have seen, the whole question of extending the parliamentary franchise beyond the limits which had been set by the Reform and Redistribution Acts of 1884–1885 was immensely complicated and no two groups even agreed upon the terms under which it should be undertaken.
The Liberal governments before the First World War found themselves, on more than one occasion, gazing into the abyss, facing the very real prospect of the violent disintegration of the United Kingdom and a state of affairs where the army might end up playing a role in political affairs. In addition to this, these administrations were preparing for the possibility, which became a stark reality in 1914, of a European war. If they were more concerned with tackling such matters and tended as a result to neglect the demands of a few hundred, largely middle-class women, it is possible in retrospect to understand their priorities.
So much for the condition of the nation. What then of the Women’s Social and Political Union? What sort of organisation was it and what were those in charge of the WSPU like? The closest parallels to the WSPU that some former members were able to see in later years were found in the fascist movements of Italy and Germany.
It is time now to look closely at the movement which brought forth the suffragettes and to examine in detail what they believed in and how far they were prepared to go for those beliefs.
Chapter Three
An Undemocratic Organisation
‘ The entire class of wealthy women would be enfranchised… the great body of working women, married or single, would be voteless still. ’
(Ada Nield Chew, writing of the WSPU in 1904)
On 9 October 1934, the British Union of Fascists, better known as the ‘blackshirts’, held a rally at the Pier Pavilion in the south coast resort of Worthing. On the platform was the leader of the blackshirts, Sir Oswald Moseley. He was flanked by two of the most important members of the new party. One of these was William Joyce, who would later become famous for broadcasting on behalf of the Germans during the Second World War, during which time he was universally known as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’. After the war, Joyce was hanged for treason. The other figure on the stage was a woman. This was Norah Elam, known also as Norah Dacre Fox, and she was perhaps the most influential woman in the British fascist movement. She had also been, from April 1913 until the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914, the General Secretary of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
Norah Elam was not the only prominent former suffragette to find her way into the blackshirts. At the same time that she was appearing on a platform alongside Oswald Moseley and Lord Haw-Haw, the chief organiser of the women’s section of the British Union of Fascists was Mary Richardson, who had become famous in 1914 for slashing the National Gallery’s ‘The Rokeby Venus’ as a protest against the treatment of Emmeline Pankhurst. The woman who had organised Emily Davison’s funeral in 1913, Mary Allen, was also an active member of Moseley’s fascists. As well as these well-known suffragettes, there were many former rank and file members of the WSPU to be found in the blackshirt uniform.
It may seem odd to find prominent suffragettes transferring their allegiance to a fascist movement, but it was not really as strange as it might seem. Although many former suffragists drifted left, members of the WSPU, including its founders, tended to move in the opposite direction. Both Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst became virulently anti-communist after the First World War and Emmeline later stood as a Conservative parliamentary candidate. One of her daughters, Adela, moved even further to the right, to the extent that she was arrested and interned during the Second World War for being a Nazi sympathiser.
Quite apart from politics, there was something about the structure of the Women’s Social and Political Union and the way it was run, that seemed to make the British Union of Fascists a logical choice of party in the 1930s for some former members. Even prominent members of the WSPU were aware that Emmeline Pankhurst’s commitment to democracy was a little weak. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence remarked on the paradox that an organisation, ‘that was founded upon a desire for the extension of democracy’ should have become ‘an enthusiastically supported dictatorship’.
In the last two chapters we looked at one or two myths associated with the suffragettes. We must now examine another of these, which is that the Women’s Social and Political Union, whose members became known from 1906 onwards as suffragettes, was in some sense a radical, mass movement. Touching closely upon this question is the extent to which the WSPU may be considered in any real meaning of the expression, a democratic organisation or, astonishingly, whether it was really even fighting for democracy. One of the most influential early members of the WSPU, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, compared it in retrospect during the 1930s to the fascist movements then in power in Germany, Italy and Spain.
The fact that the WSPU was a tiny group, lacking any wide support among ordinary people, suggests one of the main reasons why they so readily turned to violence in order to get their message across. When a handful of dedicated activists wish to gain the attention of the general public and impose their will upon others, broken windows, burned-out buildings and bomb blasts are potent methods for achieving this. This aspect of the suffragette movement was recognised during
the years when they were active, but has become obscured by the passage of time. The idea has developed that the WSPU somehow represented the interests and wishes of ordinary women, that they were the spearhead or vanguard of a popular movement.
This is certainly the version of history often conveyed to children. A popular children’s book on the suffragette movement, Women Win the Vote (Brian Williams, 2005), says ‘On 6 February 1918, women in Britain were awarded the right to vote in general elections for the first time. Many of those women were suffragettes, who had fought a long, hard battle for the right to vote’. Such books take it as given that the Pankhursts and their suffragettes won the right for women to vote in this country. This is done by portraying the WSPU as a mass movement, dedicated to democracy.
Statements such as this, that many of the women who were able to vote for the first time in parliamentary elections in 1918 were former suffragettes, are misleading. In fact 8.5 million women were on the electoral register for the 1918 General Election. Yet the membership of the WSPU in 1914 stood at between 3,000 and 5,000; the great majority were nominal members who had simply paid a shilling to join. The hard core of activists probably numbered a thousand at most. Almost all the direct action, the bombings and fire-raising, was carried out or organised by paid workers of the WSPU.
To imagine that the WSPU was in any sense a democratic movement, let alone one with popular support, is quite wrong. The suffragettes were just a small strand in the broader tapestry of the movement for female suffrage. To see them in perspective, one only has to look at the membership figures for the WSPU and compare it with the umbrella group for the moderate suffragists. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, founded in 1897, had, at the outbreak of war in 1914, well over 50,000 members. The WSPU had between 3,000 and 5,000. In other words, for every militant suffragette fighting for the vote by means of violence and disorder, there were at least 10 or 20 moderate suffragists, working peacefully and constitutionally towards the same end.
