by Simon Webb
Emily Davison’s original method for starting fires in letter boxes had proved ineffective. Burning, kerosene-soaked rags tended to die out in the enclosed space of a pillar box as soon as they had used up the available oxygen. More ingenious methods were devised, involving phosphorus and sulphuric acid. These started fires which smouldered and then burst forth when the pillar box was opened or the letters emptied out of the sack in the sorting office and exposed to the air.
On 19 July, six letter box fires took place in Birmingham. A postman clearing one of the boxes had his hand burned severely, because acid had been poured over the letters. In addition to using acids as incendiary agents, the suffragettes had now taken to pouring concentrated sulphuric acid or Spirits of Salts (hydrochloric acid) straight into pillar boxes in order to destroy letters. It was inevitable that some postmen would get these corrosive substances on their hands when they emptied the boxes.
On 22 December 1913, mail bags in Nottingham caught fire and several workers received burns. An incident the following year, on 11 July 1914, not only severely injured a guard on a train, but actually set the train itself on fire while it was travelling from Blackpool to Manchester. A Manchester man called Barlow was sorting letters in a mail van as the train passed through the Lancashire village of Salwick, when one of the mailbags he was handling exploded and caught fire. So fierce were the flames that six other bags of mail also caught fire and the side of the wooden carriage itself then began to burn. Bravely, the guard picked up the burning bags and threw them from the train. He was badly burned on his hands and arms as he did so. He then managed to extinguish the flames, which were threatening to set fire to the train. Later investigations showed that a package in one of the burned mailbags had contained a bottle of sulphuric acid and a quantity of magnesium powder. The bottle had broken and so began the fire.
This is a random sample of the results of the WSPU strategy of targeting pillar boxes and post offices with chemicals such as phosphorus and sulphuric acid. These were really cowardly hit-and-run attacks on working men who, like the suffragettes, did not have the parliamentary vote. The victims were not members of the establishment at all, just ordinary men going about their lives and doing routine and menial jobs. It must have been quite apparent to those putting dangerous chemicals in pillar boxes that they would be very likely to cause harm to the people who handled the packages of phosphorus, or who picked up with their bare hands letters deliberately drenched with sulphuric acid.
In recent years, it has been suggested that many of the wilder actions of the suffragettes were undertaken without the knowledge or approval of the leadership. However, the attacks on postal workers were specifically sanctioned by both Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. In December 1913, Mrs Pankhurst reacted angrily on hearing that she was rumoured to disapprove of the campaign against the mail. She said on 5 December, ‘Until women get the vote, whether by pillar boxes or other means, women will show their discontent’. In January of the same year, following the defeat of George Lansbury, who resigned his parliamentary seat in order to fight a by-election on the issue of women’s suffrage, Christabel Pankhurst wrote in The Suffragette: ‘By their rejection of the suffrage candidate, the majority of electors ordered women to work out their own political salvation. Those who destroyed the letters acted quickly on this advice. Correspondence would be safe if women had the vote, but if this is denied, they must take the law into their own hands’.
There could be no clearer indication that the leaders of the WSPU endorsed the placing of sulphuric acid and phosphorus in pillar boxes and were therefore ultimately responsible for the attacks in which workers were injured in various ways.
The attacks on postboxes were not isolated or atypical examples of the suffragette strategy. Anybody examining closely the history of the militant campaign might be forgiven for believing that the WSPU saw working-class men and women as unavoidable collateral damage in their struggle.
In the later stages of the suffragette campaign, large country houses owned by politicians who were felt to be unsympathetic to their cause, or even properties owned by the relatives and friends of such people, were burned down by suffragette arson squads. Books written today which mention these attacks almost invariably preface the word ‘building’ with ‘empty’, to indicate that the suffragettes would not have harmed anybody. Even in contemporary newspaper reports these houses were typically described as being ‘unoccupied’. However, the owners themselves may not have been in residence, but caretakers and domestic staff, many of them women, were invariably living in the servants’ quarters. It is little short of a miracle that none of these workers were killed as the result of the arson attacks. Many of the houses were completely destroyed by the fires, which were started with a callous disregard for anybody who was on the premises at the time.
On the night of 4 February 1914, the suffragettes torched Aberuchill Castle in Scotland. The fire swiftly gained a hold and gutted parts of the building. The domestic staff on the upper floors were trapped by the flames and could easily have been killed. Those who started the fire showed complete indifference to the working men and women whose lives were hazarded in this way.
Sometimes, the suffragettes specifically targeted women, with the apparent hope that disrupting their lives or harming their interests would cause them to think hard about the country’s political system. It is an unfortunate fact that those affected by such actions were almost invariably working-class women, who would not reap any benefit if the WSPU achieved their goal of ‘equal’ suffrage. A classic case of this came to light in February 1913 when two members of the WSPU burned down the refreshment pavilion at Kew Gardens.
This was such a senseless act that the proprietor, a Mrs Strange, went to the headquarters of the WSPU to ask why they had done such a thing. She spoke to Harriet Kerr, Secretary of the WSPU. She told Harriet Kerr, ‘By burning down the pavilion you did not injure the government but myself and a number of women that I employ’. Kerr responded by saying, ‘You take too personal a view of the matter. Your women will, I have no doubt, be very glad by and by to think that they have lent their help’. This conversation was related in court by Mrs Strange after the suffragette leadership was arrested for conspiracy.
With no welfare state to cushion its impact, unemployment in Edwardian Britain could be a serious, even disastrous blow for a working-class family. It did not seem for a moment to have occurred to those activists burning down or blowing up buildings that their actions could be harming people, including even the women whose interests they claimed to be advancing.
Another startling instance of the way in which working-class people were treated as expendable when it came to mounting operations against the supposed enemies of female suffrage, may be seen in the attack on the house that Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George was having built at Walton-on-the-Hill, near Dorking. Everyday, builders, carpenters and plasterers arrived to work on the house at 6.30 am. In the early hours of 19 February 1913, a group of two or three women, including Emily Davison, crept into the almost completed house and planted two bombs, each containing about 5 lbs of explosive.
The fuses for the bombs placed in Lloyd George’s new house were primitive in the extreme, consisting of candles placed in saucers full of paraffin-soaked wood shavings. The idea was that as the candle burned down it would set fire to the wood shavings and so ignite a fuse buried among them. It would be very difficult to calculate precisely when a bomb triggered by such an arrangement would detonate. In the event, the first bomb went off with great force at 6.10 am, just 20 minutes before the workmen arrived. It was a close thing and if a workman had arrived a little early that day he could easily have been caught in the blast, which was strong enough to bring down the ceilings, blow out the windows and make a crack in the outer wall of the building which may still be seen today.
The nature of the bomb attack on Lloyd George’s house shows that those carrying it out were not overly cautious about the injuries
or deaths that could be caused to the men who were employed there. In fact, one of them was harmed, although not physically. The explosion destroyed the tools of one of the workmen, and he lost his job as a consequence. A century ago this could easily mean the loss of a man’s livelihood, with all that this might entail for his family: hardship, the workhouse or even starvation. It is unlikely that the women who set off these explosions thought for a moment upon the possible consequences of their actions for ordinary men who, like them, had no vote.
One more example should serve to illustrate the indifference towards the livelihoods and, indeed, the very lives of working men and women shown by the suffragettes when conducting their terrorist activities. On the night of 3 April 1913, an empty train standing in a siding at Stockport, a few miles outside Manchester, was attacked by a team of suffragette bombers. They placed firelighters in every carriage, sprinkled paraffin over the seats, and then in one carriage they planted a bomb. Since the train was standing next to a busy railway line, it was perhaps not surprising that when the bomb exploded another train was passing near to it. The force of the blast was great enough to hurl the carriage in which the bomb went off over an embankment. A beam of wood was flung from the destroyed carriage and flew through the cab of the train that was passing. The engine driver could hardly have had a narrower escape. The piece of wood grazed the top of his head, knocking off his cap. An inch lower and he would have been killed.
This incident clearly shows that those carrying out such bombings did not much care who they hurt. Here was an ordinary worker who, under the law as it stood, was not entitled to vote because he was not a householder. Yet those operating on behalf of the WSPU were happy to run the risk of killing such a man, just to make a point. How and why did the WSPU get into the habit of using violence in this way to get across their point? After all, this was not found to be necessary by campaigners for women’s suffrage in any other country; it was a purely British phenomenon and limited only to members of the WSPU. The answer is simple and also sheds light upon yet another reason why the WSPU cannot be regarded as a democratic organisation.
The first acts of suffragette militancy were relatively low key. At a speech by Liberal politicians Edward Grey and Winston Churchill in 1905, Christabel Pankhurst and a close friend called Annie Kenney created a disturbance by climbing onto chairs and heckling the speakers. When ushered out by the police, Christabel spat in the face of one and slapped another, for which she and her friend were arrested. This not only brought great publicity to the WSPU, it also caused wealthy donors to send money in support of their aims. Since this small amount of violence and disorder had been so profitable, both financially and in terms of the publicity generated, it was perhaps inevitable that such behaviour should be repeated, on a larger scale and by more women.
Of course, it might have occurred to somebody at this point that since the claim was being made by those who did not want women to be given the parliamentary vote that women were unfit to take part in political activity because they were too emotional and prone to hysteria, then standing on chairs and screaming, spitting, slapping, throwing things and breaking windows were not the best means of disproving such assertions.
The violence increased inexorably over the next few years. Each increase in militant actions resulted in greater publicity and inspired more wealthy backers to come forward. Conversely, any diminution in violence meant a slump in income. The only year that the WSPU saw a drop in contributions was during the time that they eschewed violence during a truce which they called. It must have been obvious that abandoning militant tactics would cause their wealthy backers to withhold their financial help.
Of course, once the WSPU had found such a winning strategy, they had no motive for abandoning it. From breaking windows, the suffragettes moved to starting fires and then causing explosions. They may have been reaping the benefits of increased income and wider publicity from these tactics, but as the violence became more extreme, so the membership of the organisation declined. At the same time, the larger suffragist groups were growing rapidly. This meant that one of the smaller groups was being treated as though it was of greater importance, purely because it was the most aggressive and likely to engage in dangerous activity.
Other democratic groups at this time, such as trade unions and socialist parties, relied for their income upon regular, small contributions from ordinary members. This helped to ensure that they remained genuinely democratic. When the rank and file are paying, they expect to exercise some control over the party or union. This was not the case with the Women’s Social and Political Union. They were being subsidised by wealthy people in Kensington and Chelsea, who handed over their money to the leaders of the suffragettes. Since the WSPU refused after the first few years to hold Annual General Meetings, this meant that they could spend the money more or less how they pleased.
The amount of money coming into the Women’s Social and Political Union from rich donors is quite simply staggering. Cash receipts for the year 1913/1914 totalled £46,875. This approximates in modern terms to perhaps £3,750,000. Of that enormous sum, less than £50 came from the fees paid by new members. A number of donors were giving over £1,000 a year to the organisation and the only people who decided what this money should be used for were Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst.
For comparison, the average wage at that time was a little over £1 a week, although many women earned much less than this, perhaps 15s (75p) a week. The WSPU funds enabled the Pankhursts and their close friends in the organisation to give up work and live on the donations pouring in from rich sponsors. After escaping arrest in 1912 and going on the run abroad, Christabel Pankhurst spent two and a half years in Paris, living on this money. Friends of hers were paid £3 or £4 a week as full-time workers for the suffragette cause. For some idea of what this means, Annie Kenney, a particular favourite of both Pankhursts and for a time acting leader of the WSPU, was being paid four guineas a week. This was a little over four times the average salary at that time. If we take the average salary in the UK today to be around £27,000 a year and then multiply that by four, this might put Annie Kenney’s salary at around £110,000 a year today.
Because the Pankhursts were in complete control of the WSPU – ejecting anybody who disagreed with them or even asked too many questions – they were able to use the huge sums of money flowing into the organisation without reference to anybody else. They were accountable to nobody and there is every reason to suppose that their own finances were inextricably tangled up with those of the WSPU. To put it crudely, they and their associates were on to a good thing and were able to live comfortably without the need for conventional jobs.
All the talk by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst about the need for followers to obey strong leaders, walking in step and avoiding democracy, as well as the giving of unconditional allegiance and adulation to one person – a recurring theme in the suffragette movement – might bring to mind other extremist political movements which became popular in certain European countries during the 1930s. In this connection, it is curious to reflect that WSPU rallies were sometimes spectacular affairs, with everybody decked out in the white, green and purple colours of the organisation – white chosen for purity, green for hope and purple for majesty. Banners often featured pictures of Mrs Pankhurst and many of those attending wore badges showing a portrait of Emmeline Pankhurst. It does not take much imagination to see these adoring crowds come to see their beloved leader as precursors of the Nuremburg rallies. Certainly, such a political cult of personality had never been seen before in the United Kingdom.
A number of former suffragettes noticed this resemblance in later years. Cicely Hamilton, who had worked energetically for the cause of female suffrage, described Emmeline Pankhurst as ‘a forerunner of Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini – the leader who could do no wrong’. An examination of the subsequent stories of some of those who were important figures in the WSPU is revealing when viewed from this perspective.
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nbsp; The almost mindless way in which her followers accepted any position taken by Emmeline Pankhurst was neatly illustrated on the outbreak of war in 1914. So conditioned had members of the WSPU become to blindly obey the whims of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst that many would adopt any position that they were instructed to take. Even so, it came as a surprise to them when Mrs Pankhurst told them that they must now drop their campaign and throw all their weight behind Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. After being told for six years that he was practically the devil incarnate, they were now to follow him as a wise and benevolent national leader.
Emmeline Pankhurst dropped the fight for women’s suffrage as readily as she had previously abandoned socialism. Instead, she became ferociously patriotic and encouraged men to join the army to fight Germany. Later on, she became an opponent of strikes and offered her help in breaking the General Strike of 1926. She was finally adopted as a parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party. As she threw herself into each new craze, so Mrs Pankhurst seemed to lose interest in the previous one. During the war, she was consulted by Lloyd George on the matter of women’s suffrage and she told him to make whatever arrangements he felt necessary. She was no longer in the least concerned about the notion of equal suffrage, the cause which had resulted in such bitter disputes with her colleagues, friends and family. In the event, the bill that brought some women the vote in 1918 did not incorporate either universal or equal suffrage – men could vote at 21 years of age, some women at 30. By then, Emmeline Pankhurst was visiting Russia and America as part of her crusade against Bolshevism, her latest interest.
