by Simon Webb
Other prominent suffragettes, including all three of her daughters, also turned to other causes. Christabel found religion and devoted her life to working for the Seventh Day Adventists, an evangelical Christian denomination. Sylvia became involved with the mystical sect of Theosophy and the youngest daughter, Adela, after moving through the whole spectrum of political belief, settled down as a sympathiser of the Nazi regime in Germany. During the Second World War, she was interned in Australia as a possible fifth columnist, due to her admiration for the Third Reich. Curiously enough, she was not alone in this among former suffragettes. What possible connection could there be between the suffragettes and the fascists? Some former activists saw distinct similarities.
In the late 1930s, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, once a close associate of the Pankhursts but later expelled by them from the WSPU, observed uneasily the similarities between the suffragettes and the fascist movements in Italy and Germany. Writing in 1938, she said, ‘It is so-called upholders of democracy who create, when they are false in their principles, and when they attempt to crush their opponents, dictatorships’. She also remarked that the WSPU ‘bore a certain resemblance to the dictatorships so common in the world today’. Writing in the 1930s, Cecily Hamilton, another former suffragette, said that the WSPU was ‘the first indication of the dictatorship movements which are by way of thrusting democracy out of the European continent’.
WSPU members often seemed to find that the demise of the union left a gap in their lives. Some filled this gap by becoming writers and artists; others became involved in various churches or political movements, including both socialism and the fight against vivisection. For some of the most high-profile campaigners, the political landscape between the wars contained a very attractive new ideology, a political philosophy which they felt embodied many of the features which they had found so congenial in the WSPU.
Mary Richardson, who had hacked at the Velasquez masterpiece in the National Gallery, was drawn to the British fascist movement under Oswald Mosley. Richardson had been in the thick of much of the suffragette action in the years leading up to the First World War. She went on to become the chief organiser of the British Union of Fascists women’s section and saw in retrospect the suffragettes as a proto-fascist movement. She wrote:
I was first attracted to the Blackshirts because I saw in them the courage, the action, the loyalty, the gift of service, and the ability to serve which I had known in the suffragette movement. When later I discovered that Blackshirts were attacked for no visible cause or reason, I admired them the more when they hit back and hit back hard.
For this leading suffragette at least, the blackshirts were in some way the natural successor to the Women’s Social and Political Union.
Norah Elam, also known as Mrs Dacre Fox, was once the General Secretary of the WSPU. Like Mary Richardson, she was imprisoned for her suffragette activities, going on hunger strike on three occasions. Elam and her husband joined the British Union of Fascists soon after it was formed and she became a prominent figure in its women’s section, writing many articles in praise of fascism as an ideology. She stood as a parliamentary candidate for Northampton. In 1940, she and her husband were both arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18b as possible fifth columnists. Like Mary Richardson, she saw in the structure of the WSPU a forerunner of the fascist movement. She wrote during the 1930s:
The Women’s Movement, like the Fascist Movement, was conducted under strict discipline, and cut across all party allegiances: its supporters were drawn from every class and party. It appealed to women to forget self-interest: to relinquish petty personal advantage, the privilege of the sheltered few for the benefit of the many: and to stand together against the wrongs and injustices which were inherent in a system so disastrous to the well-being of the race. Like the Fascist movement, too, it chose its Leader, and once having chosen gave that leader absolute authority to direct policy and destiny, displaying a loyalty and devotion never surpassed in the history of this country.
She even described Sir Oswald Mosley as a ‘latter day Mrs Pankhurst’. Elam, it must be remembered, was no rank and file member of the WSPU but its General Secretary, one of the first suffragettes ever to undergo force-feeding.
Another of her quotations, from the 22 February 1935 edition of The Blackshirt, gives us a lucid description of the feelings of this former, high-ranking member of the WSPU:
No woman who loves her country, her sex or her liberty, need fear the coming victory of Fascism. Rather, she will find what the suffragettes dreamt about twenty odd years ago is now becoming a possibility, and woman will buckle on her armour for the last phase of the greatest struggle, for the liberation of the human race, which the world has yet seen.
Stirring stuff indeed and a good indication of the way in which the ideology of the suffragette movement could dovetail neatly with that of Mosley’s blackshirts.
Another prominent member of the WSPU who became enamoured of fascism in the 1930s was Mary Sophia Allen. Allen was the WSPU’s organiser for south-west England and was imprisoned three times for breaking windows. An early hunger striker, she was force-fed on one occasion. It was Mary Allen who organised Emily Davison’s spectacular funeral procession through central London. Like many in the WSPU, including of course Emmeline Pankhurst herself, Mary Allen was bitterly opposed to communism, which she saw as the major threat to the world. Her anxieties about a Bolshevik takeover in this country led to her meeting Hitler, Franco and Mussolini during the thirties.
When the Second World War began in 1939, consideration was given to imprisoning Allen under the Defence of the Realm Act, but in the end, this was not thought to be necessary. Instead, she was subjected to an order which prevented her from travelling more than five miles from her home and forbade her to use a telephone or radio. It was feared that she might, in fact, be a spy for the Nazis.
The need to follow a strong leader, to whom unconditional obedience is pledged; the belief that the great mass of ordinary people are not able to decide for themselves what they need; the camaraderie of being a part of a group which is in opposition to the established order – all these were features that might have made the blackshirts attractive to the same type of women who had previously gravitated to the suffragette movement. The obsession with the health of the ‘race’, which both Emmeline and Christabel vigorously espoused, also fitted neatly into this picture.
Another aspect of the British Union of Fascists worth noting is that between a fifth and a quarter of the members were women. This was a far higher proportion than any of the other parties in existence at that time boasted. Moseley acknowledged his debt to the female members of his movement, writing: ‘My movement has largely been built by the fanaticism of women; they hold ideals with tremendous passion. Without women, I could not have got a quarter of the way’.
Of course, not all members of the WSPU were secretly fascist sympathisers, but there were enough similarities between the suffragettes and the fascists to raise more than a few eyebrows. The jingoistic patriotism displayed by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst during the First World War, the fanatical distrust not only of communists, but any working man who went on strike, the uncritical adoration of a strong leader, the uniforms and spectacles of public rallies, the readiness to use violent means to achieve political ends – all of these were common both to the WSPU and later fascist movements in Italy, Germany and also in this country.
Some of the similarities between the WSPU and the British Union of Fascists were uncanny. In May 1909, the WSPU organised a ‘Women’s Exhibition’, which was held at the old ice skating rink in Knights-bridge. The building was covered in green, white and purple banners and once inside, it was clear that this was not just another bazaar of the kind beloved of middle-class women. For one thing, there were demonstrations of ju-jitsu, an unarmed combat technique, which some of the suffragettes employed when fighting with the police or those intent on disrupting their meetings. There was the world’s f
irst all-female drum and fife marching band, which played rousing tunes. Even stranger were the displays of drill, with women marching and standing to attention under the supervision of drill instructors. Among the souvenirs on offer were dolls dressed as suffragettes in the colours of the WSPU.
Thirty years later, women in the British Union of Fascists, including a number of former suffragettes, were involved in identical activities, learning ju-jitsu, drilling in military fashion, selling dolls dressed as blackshirts and following a charismatic leader who required unconditional personal devotion.
Far from being a mass movement, the WSPU was a small group of activists who felt that they knew better than ordinary people what was good for them. When those ordinary people showed no enthusiasm for what was being suggested, a hard core of militants attempted to force agreement by the use of violence. The bombings and arson attack were carried out in the main by paid workers from the WSPU and sanctioned by the leadership of the organisation, Mrs Pankhurst specifically endorsing both bomb attacks and fire-raising.
The WSPU did not engage in terrorism from the beginning, although there is reason to suppose that the possibility of such activity was considered soon after its founding. The suffragettes began with fairly mild disorder and violence and moved, step by step, towards out-and-out terrorism when they realised that constitutional methods were proving too slow for them.
Chapter Four
The Use of Terror and the Need for Martyrs
‘ The prominence that would be given to this in the press would probably act on the minds of these half-insane women, and might suggest… the very act it was hoped to avoid. ’
(Police report on a suspected suffragette plot to assassinate Prime Minister Asquith, 1909)
It is quite impossible at this late stage to discover whether or not the Pankhursts planned from the beginning that members of their organisation would set fire to buildings and plant bombs. It is curious, however, that Emmeline Pankhurst chose for what she described as the WSPU’s ‘permanent motto’, the slogan, ‘Deeds, not words’.
The idea of attracting attention to a political cause through violent acts, such as assassinations and bombings, was not a new one when the WSPU began and had by that time become known as ‘Propaganda by the deed’, which sounds very similar to Mrs Pankhurst‘s ‘Deeds not words’. Some nineteenth century revolutionaries had concluded that writing long and convoluted tracts of political philosophy was not an effective way of getting their message across. They decided that the explosion of a bomb or violent death of a politician would catch the attention of the general public far more rapidly than mere words alone; it was a statement that could not be ignored. This was ‘Propaganda by the deed’; deeds, rather than words being used to get the point across. Not only could bombings be used to publicise a cause in this way, they could also be part of a deliberate strategy to force political change. It is in the light of this tradition that Emmeline Pankhurst’s choice of the expression, ‘Deeds, not words’, must be interpreted.
It is sometimes forgotten that Britain had a history of terrorism in the latter part of Victoria’s reign. There is often a tendency today to view terrorism as being a modern phenomenon, a scourge of the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, but that is very far from being the case. The worst loss of life in a terrorist attack in London before the 7/7 tube bombings in 2005, for instance, was caused by the detonation of a quarter of a ton of gunpowder placed outside London’s Clerkenwell House of Detention in 1867. Twelve people were killed in this explosion, which demolished a row of houses and caused damage to windows and chimney pots half a mile away.
The Clerkenwell Outrage, as it became known, was Victorian England’s 9/11. Troops were mobilised and police officers armed in the aftermath of this terrible event. The suspicion was that the explosion in Clerkenwell was to be the first in a series of attacks by Irish terrorists which might be aimed at destroying landmarks from the Houses of Parliament to St Paul’s Cathedral. There was talk of introducing identity cards and enlisting concerned citizens in a new militia to guard the capital against further outrages. The man who lit the fuse for this bomb, an Irishman called Michael Barrett, found fame of a sort as the last man in this country to be hanged in public. His name lives on to this day. ‘Mick Barrett’ became a pejorative term for Irishmen, which lingers on as ‘Micks’.
A few years after the Clerkenwell Outrage, Irish extremists conducted a more systematic bombing campaign in England, using dynamite to attack Scotland Yard, the Tower of London, parliament and the London Underground. Visitors to museums and other tourist attractions now had to wait in line to have their bags searched and precautions were taken to protect bridges and public buildings with security grilles to prevent bombs being placed near them. There were some who mocked, but on 13 December 1884, these measures paid off. On that Saturday night, three men in a rowing boat tried to attach a large device containing nitroglycerine to the underside of London Bridge. The newly installed grilles there frustrated their efforts and caused the bomb to be mishandled. The resulting explosion did little harm to London Bridge, but killed all three of the bombers. Paddington Station was targeted on 30 October 1883 and on that same day the first tube bombing in London’s history took place near Charing Cross Station. On 20 January 1885, another bomb exploded on the underground, this time at Gower Street Station.
The Irish were not the only people planting bombs in Victorian London. In 1894 a bomb exploded near Greenwich Observatory and three years later came the first death in a tube bombing, when a charge of dynamite went off on a train at Aldersgate Station, which has since been renamed Barbican. These attacks were the work of anarchists.
The fear of terrorism was keen in Edwardian Britain, although focused less on domestic terrorists than on gunmen and bombers who might be hiding among the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers flooding into the country. In January, 1909, an unarmed police officer was shot dead in Tottenham during a bungled robbery by eastern European asylum seekers, who had been raising funds for a terrorist group. Two years later, on 16 December 1910, five police officers were gunned down, three of whom died of their wounds. The killers were members of a gang of foreign terrorists. These murders culminated in the so-called ‘Siege of Sydney Street’, in London’s East End. The army were called in to deal with the gunmen.
In the Edwardian period, as now, the various subversive movements with terrorist leanings often crossed paths and shared information and resources. In recent years, we have seen connections of this sort between, for instance, the IRA and the PLO. Much the same happened in the years leading up to the First World War. One such association saw some suffragettes moving in the same circles which had seen a political murder being committed, the first in this country for many decades. Although most of those harmed by the suffragettes’ attacks were working people, there were a number of plots to kill politicians and even the occasional magistrate. It has only recently been revealed that there were also plans to assassinate the Prime Minister himself in 1909.
One of the lesser-known terrorist groups operating in Britain during Edward VII’s reign was based at a large house in Highgate, the headquarters of the Indian Home Rule Society. The house was used by Indians opposed to British rule in their country. Various illegal activities took place there, ranging from bomb-making to gunrunning. The activists, many of them students who lived at the so-called ‘India House’, practised marksmanship at a shooting gallery a stone’s throw from the British Museum. The name of this range was, improbably enough, ‘Fairyland’ and it was situated at 92 Tottenham Court Road (see Plate 3).
Some of those frequenting the shooting gallery in Tottenham Court Road used the rifles and pistols supplied there, others brought their own weapons. Young men from the Indian Home Rule Society often arrived there to practise shooting with very modern Browning, semi-automatic pistols. One of the Indians, Madan Lal Dhingra, who had close contact with India House was a 22-year-old engineering student at Univers
ity College London. On 1 July 1909, he put the skills he had acquired to good effect when he carried out the first political assassination seen in London for a hundred years.
On the evening of 1 July, the Secretary of State for India, Lord Morley, was due to attend a public meeting at the Institute for Imperial Studies in London. Instead, he sent his political aide-de-camp, Sir Curzon Wyllie. As Wyllie entered the hall, Madan Lal Dhingra approached and shot him in the face four times, killing him on the spot. The Indian was seized by members of the audience and less than three weeks later found himself in the dock at the Old Bailey on trial for his life.
One of those who gave evidence at the trial was the proprietor of the Tottenham Court Road shooting gallery. He testified that the defendant was known to him and had been in the habit of bringing an automatic pistol to his range and practising his shooting. On the evening of 1 July, at about 5.30pm, only two hours before the assassination, Madan Lal Dhingra had arrived at his range with an automatic pistol and fired 12 shots at a target, from a distance of 18 feet. The target was produced for the jury and it was seen that 11 of the shots had hit it. The gun used in that session, a Belgian Browning automatic, was the same one used to kill Sir Curzon Wyllie.
Madan Lal Dhingra was sentenced to death and hanged on 17 August. Scotland Yard’s Special Branch began to investigate both the India House and also the shooting gallery which had been at the centre of the assassination. They soon learned something very alarming – Indian nationalists were not the only dissidents learning to shoot in Tottenham Court Road. Henry Morley, owner of Fairyland, told the police that two women had been coming there over the summer to practise shooting. Intriguingly, they brought with them their own pistol, which happened to be a Browning automatic of the same type used in the recent assassination. These were state-of-the-art weapons, much more sophisticated than the revolvers generally in use at that time. By then, the police had already found evidence which suggested that the Indian Home Rule Society had been involved in smuggling crates of such pistols to India, where they were being used by extremists.
