by Simon Webb
In September, there was an even more disturbing development. From July to October 1909, members of the Women’s Freedom League, a moderate and non-violent group of suffragists, had been picketing parliament. A member of the organisation contacted the police and claimed that this picket had been infiltrated by women who planned to shoot Prime Minister Herbert Asquith as he left the House. Special Branch officers interviewed the woman who wrote to them about this plot and satisfied themselves that there was cause for concern.
The identities of the women who had been learning to shoot were never revealed. Asquith refused to agree to police requests to ban demonstrators from parliament and the most that could be done was to increase the number of bodyguards assigned to the Prime Minister. There were sound tactical reasons for not clearing away the protesters who were picketing the House of Commons – it could precipitate the very act it was hoped to avoid. As the official police report put it:
The serious matter is that we should have to make known the facts leading us to believe that there is a conspiracy to murder the PM. 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 effectively the commission of the very act which we wish to prevent. Moreover, the removal of the pickets would be looked on by them as an act of violence and injustice, and would make them furious and more ready to commit such a crime.
That the two women who were practising shooting at Fairyland were using exactly the same, exceedingly unusual, pistol as that used to shoot Sir Curzon Wyllie, caused eyebrows to be raised at Scotland Yard. That they should be learning to shoot at the same place that Wyllie’s assassin had been frequenting a few weeks earlier was also a curious coincidence. The men from India House were known for their links with Irish Fenians and it was entirely possible that they had also been friendly with suffragette activists. In the event, the women who had been seen at Fairyland dropped from sight and the ostentatious new security precautions did the trick: there was no attempt on Asquith’s life.
None of the terrorist actions that took place in Victorian and Edwardian Britain achieved the end hoped for by those carrying them out. They certainly attracted publicity, but most people were shocked at the violence and not moved to sympathise with the aims of the terrorists in the slightest. It is in this context that the suffragette bombing campaign must be seen.
England had already experienced terrorism and had shown no inclination to surrender to it. Either the suffragettes were unaware of this or perhaps they thought that their own cause was so strong and morally justified that public reaction would be different. This was a terrible miscalculation because, although the violence certainly captured more attention for the suffragettes, it also lost them support, generating instead revulsion for the actions of the extremists and sympathy for the government which had to tackle such a problem. In short, suffragette terrorism produced precisely the opposite effect from that which was intended. This is always a danger for those using terrorism as a political weapon. It is difficult to judge in advance whether your cause will be advanced or irrevocably harmed by the starting of fires and the causing of explosions.
Why did the WSPU think that the bombs they were planting might help their campaign? There are several ways that terrorism can be used to achieve political ends. One way is as part of a strategy to provoke a general uprising against a repressive government. This entails the systematic use of violence to such a degree that the state responds with harsh measures, typically deploying soldiers and torturing or executing those who oppose the status quo. Once this repression gets under way, the general population becomes caught up in the situation, suffering from the tactics used by the government and its agents. They are then driven into the arms of the revolutionaries and so realise that they have a common interest in the overthrow of the regime. It is hardly necessary to remark that this particular plan would have had little chance of success in Britain at that time.
There is a second way that terrorism may be used by a small and undemocratic group to get what it wants, a method that is more suited to a democratic society. If you can make enough of a nuisance of yourself and cause sufficient disruption to the lives of ordinary people, then there might come a point at which the mood of the public is in favour of the government making concessions or even giving in entirely to those creating the annoyance, just so that ordinary, peaceful life may resume.
After Herbert Asquith replaced Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister in 1908, the WSPU began to become more aggressive. From shouting slogans, they moved to smashing windows and chaining themselves to railings. This is all nuisance and vandalism, rather than terrorism. We can precisely date the onset of straightforward terrorism by the suffragettes. It began on the evening of 18 July 1912.
Perhaps the best way to decide if the four women whose actions resulted in their appearing in court in Dublin that year really were terrorists is to look at the charges which they faced. Here are some of the 12 charges that were read out by the clerk of the court before their trial:
Having on July 18th last feloniously, unlawfully and maliciously set fire to the Theatre Royal, unlawfully causing an explosion in the theatre by means of a metal case containing an explosive in the nature of gunpowder, causing by means of gunpowder an explosion of a nature likely to cause serious injury to property, causing by means of a certain explosive unknown an explosion of a nature likely to endanger life and conspiring with other persons to cause an explosion in the United Kingdom likely to endanger life.
It is hard to imagine reading in tomorrow’s newspaper about people being charged with such offences and not assuming that this was a possible terrorist conspiracy. Still, perhaps it was all nonsense and the police had exaggerated what these four women had been up to? Actually, there was no argument about the events which led to the trial in Dublin that year. The suffragette newspaper Votes for Women agreed that the actions of which they were accused had actually taken place. The only debate was whether or not those actions were justifiable.
In July 1912, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith visited Dublin in the company of the Irish nationalist MP John Redmond. On 18 July, he and Redmond, accompanied by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, rode through the city in an open carriage to general acclaim. This was a triumphal procession to draw attention to the Home Rule Bill, which would accord Ireland a degree of autonomy. As they passed cheering crowds, a woman darted out and threw a hatchet at Asquith’s face. It missed him, but sliced through John Redmond’s cheek and ear. Wrapped around the haft of the small axe was a piece of paper bearing the words, ‘This symbol of the extinction of the Liberal Party for evermore’.
The following day, Asquith was due to make a speech at the Theatre Royal. On the evening of the 18 July, a variety show was held at the theatre, with an orchestra and various performers. The place was full and as the audience was about to leave, three women began trying to burn the theatre down. They poured petrol on carpets and curtains, setting fire to them. One of the women, seated in a box, managed to set fire to a chair, which she then hurled down at the orchestra. As if this was not dangerous enough, several bombs were also detonated and an attempt was made to start a fire in the cinema projector room, where reels of highly inflammable film were stored.
Witnesses describe scenes of pandemonium, with flames leaping up the curtain surrounding one box and the theatre filling with smoke after an explosion which, according to a soldier who was present, sounded like artillery fire. The situation in the theatre was unbelievably dangerous. John Moody, conductor of the Theatre Royal orchestra, subsequently gave evidence as to what he saw. A woman threw a blazing chair from the box above the orchestra pit and the chair struck the wall, then landed near to the cello player. He watched as the woman who had thrown the chair set fire to the curtains on the box nearest the stage. They immediately began to blaze. He also saw the fire in the projector room and heard an explosion, which filled the theatre with smoke. Four women were seized by outraged theatre goers an
d later charged with a series of offences, including conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm, in connection with the attack on the Prime Minister and various other charges relating to the explosions and fire at the theatre.
Perhaps we should pause at this point and consider these actions. Throwing a hatchet at somebody’s head is almost certain to result in serious injury – you would be lucky not to blind or disfigure your victim by such an action; you could even kill somebody in that way. That only a few cuts and grazes were inflicted upon one of the men in the carriage was merely good fortune; the intention was surely to maim or disfigure the man at whom the weapon was hurled.
Starting a fire and then setting off explosions in a crowded theatre is foolhardy and dangerous. Quite apart from the obvious risk of burning the building down with the possible loss of life, there is also the risk of causing a panic and stampede for the exits, in which people could be crushed to death. Anybody splashing petrol around, setting it on fire and then detonating bombs in a theatre full of people must be at the very least expecting to cause injury or death.
Who were the women who carried out these attacks? Were they lunatics on the fringe of the suffragette movement, extremists who were operating more or less on their own initiative? In fact, all were at the very heart of the movement, and long-standing members of the WSPU. There is a general tendency to play down dangerous or outlandish actions by suffragettes and pretend that those carrying them out were acting against the wishes of the leadership. Emily Davison is sometimes described, for example, as a ‘lone wolf’, somebody who acted independently and without the sanction of the WSPU leaders. In the case of those involved in the first indisputable terrorist action by suffragettes, such a defence is not possible.
One of the women arrested and subsequently convicted for her part in the attack on the Theatre Royal was 45-year-old Sarah Jane Baines, more commonly known as Jennie Baines. In April 1908, Baines had been appointed full-time organiser for the WSPU in the Midlands and North of England. She received for this work a wage of £2 a week. Mabel Capper, although acquitted of causing any damage, was also an organiser for the WSPU in Manchester. Gladys Evans had been a member of the WSPU marching band and was also a paid employee of the WSPU.
Mary Leigh was a Drum Major in the same marching band and was being paid a salary of over a £1 a week, a decent wage at that time. She was a close friend of Emily Davison and had carried out a number of actions in the company of other WSPU organisers. Three years before the attempt to burn down the theatre in Dublin, she had been involved in an attack during a visit to Birmingham by Asquith. Her protests then were, like the attack in Dublin, carried out together with paid WSPU organisers. The Birmingham protest too was a violent one, in the course of which a police officer was badly injured and several passers-by also needed medical attention.
Emmeline Pankhurst had already said, by the time of the attempt to burn down the Theatre Royal, that she would never disown the actions of any members of the WSPU which were undertaken in the furtherance of its aims. This could be (and indeed at the Old Bailey the following year it was) taken as encouragement and incitement of violence. Having already openly urged the smashing of windows and other destruction of property, Mrs Pankhurst did not hesitate a few months later to endorse even the bombing of a cabinet minister’s home. Those who carried out the attack on the theatre in Dublin were not disowned by the WSPU; in fact, when the police raided the London headquarters of the WSPU the following spring, two of the women on the premises at the time had been among those charged with the arson and bombing of the Theatre Royal.
Five days before the attack in Dublin, a serious attempt to set fire to the home of Lewis Harcourt, Secretary of State for the Colonies was thwarted by the vigilance of a police constable in Oxfordshire. In the early hours of 13 July, PC Godden apprehended a woman loitering near the grounds of Nuneham House, Harcourt’s country residence. She was carrying a satchel which contained cans of oil, boxes of matches, wax tapers, fire lighters and various other incriminating materials. Also found was a statement, which explained the actions the woman was about to take.
Helen Craggs, the woman arrested that night, had since 1910 been a paid organiser of the WSPU. She was, like the others who were carrying out the arson and bombing attacks, close to the leadership of the organisation. This involvement was exceedingly deep – Helen Craggs was romantically entangled with Emmeline Pankhurst’s son Harry. It is inconceivable that Mrs Pankhurst should not have been aware that this woman was proposing to burn down a cabinet minister’s house.
The leadership of the WSPU were evidently pursuing two simultaneous strategies when it came to the use of bombing and arson. We shall see later how these different strands ran alongside each other as the campaign gathered momentum throughout 1913 and 1914. On the one hand there were the targeted attacks on members of the government and others whom the suffragettes felt were enemies of their cause. There were also actions aimed at the general public, particularly men. This too is a classic tactic of terrorism, as outlined by ideologues of the late nineteenth century. So closely does the terrorist campaign conducted by leading members of the WSPU follow the pattern outlined in writings by revolutionaries in Britain, Russia and America, that it is all but impossible to view their actions as random attacks undertaken without a coherent, underlying plan. This was not a collection of scattered, spur of the moment outrages carried out by sympathisers, it was a methodical and systematic crusade directed by a determined leadership.
The decision to resort to bombings in public places was almost certainly a deliberate and calculated move by the WSPU, once they saw that attacks limited to the government and its agents were proving ineffective in rousing the public and persuading them to support the suffragettes. There were, at least at the beginning of the terrorism, sound historical reasons for favouring such a strategy.
When attacks are limited to agents of the government and property owned by the government, then many people soon become a little blasé about such incidents. It begins to look like a private quarrel between the leaders of the country and a group of people who are opposed to them. After all, the windows broken by the suffragettes in government offices did not really affect anybody other than the civil service clerks working there. Finding that your local church has been burned to the ground though, brings it home that you are not merely a bystander to this dispute, it can also have a direct and unpleasant effect upon you. When this happens, perhaps you yourself will start urging the government to give these people what they want, just to end the nuisance that is being caused to you, regardless of how sensible the aims of the terrorists are.
This strategy can be expanded in various ways so that other organisations will, reluctantly, end up supporting your cause and urging the government to settle. This sort of unwilling support for the aims of a terrorist group was exploited by the WSPU and took the form of economic terrorism, amounting, in effect, to something like a protection racket. The main aim of lighting fires and setting off explosives was not to harm people, although the suffragettes were certainly quite
64 The Suffragette Bombers careless about this on many occasions. The most significant purpose was simply to create publicity. Another was to drain the resources of insurance companies and small businesses and so cause them to beg the government to take steps to end the attacks. The accounts of some of the fires started in 1913, the estimates of the financial costs incurred are pretty breathtaking.
Two fairly typical examples are the destruction by fire of St Catherine’s Church in Hatcham on 6 May 1913 and the bombing of the Britannia Pier in Yarmouth on 17 April 1914. The suffragettes had a bit of a bee in their bonnet about churches, which they viewed as being complicit in the patriarchal society which was denying them votes. A number were blown up or torched as a result. The rebuilding of St Catherine’s Church in 1913 was estimated to cost £20,000 (roughly equating today to about £1,600,000). The damage to the pier at Yarmouth, which was caused by a bomb, was quoted by the
owner as being in the region of £15,000 (something over £1,200,000 today).
These two instances are not at all exceptional. They pale into insignificance when compared with the initial estimates for the loss of buildings and property at the great Portsmouth Dockyard fire in December 1913, which was commonly regarded as the work of the suffragettes. The cost of rebuilding was announced by the navy to be about £200,000.
These were colossal sums for the insurance companies to find and the WSPU made no bones about their intention to drive some businesses to bankruptcy by their tactics. This began with the mass destruction of plate-glass shop windows in 1912. Some of these shops had insurance, for others, the cost of replacing their windows would have to be borne by their own business. This sort of thing was a win-win situation for the suffragettes. Property insurance was not nearly as common a century ago as it is now, even for commercial premises. Either a small business would find itself with a huge bill for new windows, for example, which it might not be able to pay, or an insurance company would find its profits cut by the amount that was being paid out for attacks.
It was suggested by some leading suffragettes that the big insurance companies began to support votes for women at about this time because they could see their profit margins dwindling. It was said that they were anxious for the government to give in to the militancy, just so that they would stop having to pay out such large sums each month. And the sums really were very large. In February 1914 alone, for instance, the cost of the damages caused by suffragette arson attacks was estimated to be £62,000. It would have been a great relief for the companies paying out such vast sums if the suffragette campaign could be brought to a halt. The easiest way of doing that would be for the government to give in to their demands.
