We address to your branch a very urgent request to ascertain from your local voting register the following particulars: —
(1)The total number of electors in the Ward.
(2)The total number of women voters.
(3)The number of women voters of the working classes.
(4)The number of voters not of the working classes.
It is impossible to lay down a strict definition of the term “working classes,” but for this purpose it will be sufficient to regard as working-class women, those who work for wages, who are domestically employed, or who are supported by the earnings of wage-earning children.
It was not unnatural, that the majority of the branches failed to comply with a request which obviously entailed a very extensive work. Nevertheless returns were sent in from between forty and fifty different towns and districts in various parts of the country and these showed the following results:2
On receiving these figures, the National Council of the Independent Labour Party decided to adopt the original Women’s Enfranchisement Bill, which passed its Second Reading in 1870. The text of the Bill was as follows:
In all Acts relating to the qualifications and registration of voters or persons entitled or claiming to be registered and to vote in the election of members of Parliament, wherever words occur which import the masculine gender the same shall be held to include women for all purposes connected with and having reference to the right to be registered as voters and to vote in such election, any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding.
Meanwhile we of the Women’s Social and Political Union were eagerly looking forward to the new session of Parliament. It is indeed wonderful, in the midst of the great Women’s Movement that is present with us to-day, to look back upon its small beginnings in that dreary and dismal time not yet six years ago. It seemed then well-nigh impossible to rouse the London women from their apathy upon this question, for the old Suffrage workers had lost heart and energy in the long struggle and those who had joined them in recent days saw no prospect that votes for women would ever come to pass.
On the basis of Booth’s figures, Miss Clara Collett, the Government’s Senior Inspector for Women’s Industries, writing in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society for September, 1908, estimated that the women occupiers of London might be divided as follows: —
I myself was then a student at the Royal College of Art, South Kensington, but I decided to absent myself in order to help my mother, who had come down from Manchester to “lobby,” as it is called, on those few important days. The House met on Tuesday, February 13, and during the eight days which intervened before the result of the Private Members’ ballot was made known we spent the whole of our time in the Strangers’ Lobby striving to induce every Member who had pledged himself to support Women’s Suffrage to agree that his chance in the ballot should be given to a Women’s Suffrage Bill. It was my first experience of Lobbying. I knew we had an uphill task before us, but I had no conception of how hard and discouraging it was to be. Members of Parliament all told us that they had pledged themselves to do “something for their constituents” or had some other measure in which they were interested, or had not been in Parliament long and preferred to wait until they had more experience before they would care to ballot for a Bill at all. Oh, yes, they were “in favour” of Women’s Suffrage; they believed that “the ladies ought to have votes,” but they really could not give their places in the ballot for the question; it was always “anything but that,” and during the whole of the week we spent in the Lobby we did not succeed in adding one single promise to that which we had originally received from Mr. Keir Hardie.
On the fateful Wednesday on which the result was declared, my mother and I were the only women in the Lobby. We sat there on the shiny black leather seats in the circular hall waiting for the result, and at last we saw with relief Mr. Keir Hardie’s picturesque figure coming hurrying towards us from the Inner Lobby. He was so kind and helpful, the only kind and helpful person in the whole of Parliament, it seemed. At once he told us that his name had not been drawn in the ballot and explained that only the first twelve, or, at most, fourteen, places that had been drawn could be of any use to the Members who had secured them, and that, owing to the limited number of days upon which private Members’ Bills could be discussed, only the first three or four had even a moderately good chance of becoming law.3 Our next move must therefore be to get in touch with the successful fourteen Members and to endeavour to persuade one of them to devote his place in the ballot to a Women’s Suffrage Bill. After considerable trouble we finally got into communication with all of them, and they all said “No,” with the exception of Mr. Bamford Slack, who held the fourteenth place, and who at last agreed to introduce our Bill, largely because his wife was a Suffragist and helped us to urge our cause. Of course the fourteenth place was not by any means a good one, and the Bill was set down as the Second Order of the Day for Friday, May 12.
In the meantime we drafted a petition in support of it and set ourselves to procure signatures. One Sunday evening I went with a bundle of petition forms to a meeting addressed by Mr. G. K. Chesterton at Morriss Hall, Clapham. The lecturer’s remarks were devoted to a eulogy of the French Revolution, from which he asserted all ideas of popular representation had sprung. An opening, which I seized, was given for a question on the subject of votes for women in relation to the Government of our Colonies. Whilst the audience were asking questions and offering criticisms, Mr. Chesterton was busily making sketches of us all, but, though I saw myself being added to the picture gallery, in replying to the questions raised in the debate afterwards, he did not answer my point. Afterwards, however, he came up and told me that he had forgotten to deal with it and then gave me an explanation. I had not asked, “Are you in favour of Votes for Women?” I had assumed that he was and he replied on the same assumption, and afterwards voluntarily signed his name to my petition. It was with surprise, not untempered with amusement, therefore, that I afterwards found Mr. Chesterton coming forward as an active anti-suffragist, but his attitude seemed to me to be an augury of our speedy success, for he delights to champion unpopular causes and to oppose himself to the overwhelming and inevitable march of coming events.
Many other women’s societies, suffrage, organised petitions at this time, for the fact of having a Bill before the House of Commons for the first time for eight years, had sent a thrill of new life through them all. The result of our united efforts was that, when the twelfth of May came round, the Strangers’ Lobby was densely crowded, and many of the women had to be drafted on to the Terrace, or to stand in the various passages leading from the Lobby. As well as the members of the various suffrage societies, women of all classes, from the richest to the poorest, were represented in the gathering, and amongst the rest was a large contingent of women Co-operators, accompanied by Mrs. Nellie Alma Martel, of Australia, who had helped to win votes for women there, and had afterwards been run as a candidate for the Commonwealth Parliament, having polled more than 20,000 votes.
Many of the women were quite pathetically confident that we were going to get Women’s Suffrage then and there, but those of us who knew rather more, both of the stubborn character of our opponents and the antiquated Parliamentary procedure which renders it possible for a handful of obstructionists to block any private Member’s measure unless the Government will come to its aid, knew that the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill stood in a very precarious position. The question which occupied the first place on the day for which our own measure had been set down, was a simple, practically non-contentious little Bill, the object of which was to provide that carts travelling along the public roads by night should carry a light behind as well as before. We had spent weeks in bringing all possible pressure to bear, both upon the promoters of the Roadway Lighting Bill, that they might withdraw their measure, and upon the Conservative Government, in the hope that they would give special facilities for the further discussion of the Bill. In both d
irections we met with a refusal, but we would not give up hope. Finally on the very day of the Second Reading, when the anti-suffragists (as we had already foreseen would be the case) were amusing themselves by spinning out the debate on the Roadway Lighting Bill by pointless jokes and contemptible absurdities, Mrs. Pankhurst sent a message to Mr. Balfour telling him that if facilities for the passing into law of the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill were not granted, the Women’s Social and Political Union would work actively against the Government at the next General Election. This message produced no apparent effect; and from the meeting of the House, at twelve o’clock until half-past four in the afternoon, the discussion upon the Roadway Lighting Bill continued. Then only half an hour remained for our Bill, and this, amid irresponsible laughter, was “talked out.”
The news of what was being done had gradually filtered into the Lobby, and the attitude of the assembled women had changed from one of pleased expectancy to anger and dismay. A feeling of tense excitement seemed to run through the gathering. Some of the faces were flushed and others white, whilst many had tears in their eyes. Especially amongst the working women Co-operators feeling was running high. These women were eagerly looking forward to the time when they would be able to take their part side by side with men in settling the terrible social problems with which they were met on every hand. They bitterly resented the way in which they were being insulted by Members of the House of Commons; they wanted to do something to express their feelings of disapproval and when the order for strangers to leave the House was given, many of them seemed disinclined to go. Then some of the women who had been listening to the debate from behind the Grille in the Ladies’ gallery, came down into the Lobby and told us that a strange man in the adjoining gallery had suddenly sprung up to protest against the way in which our question was being “talked out,” he had been thrown out of the House by the police, and was now at the entrance to the Lobby. This piece of news created a diversion. The women flocked out to thank him. It was not until afterwards that we or they learned that the man was one of the unemployed bootmakers who had marched up from Leicester, and that he had not made his protest in our favour, but because he saw that the House was wasting hour after hour in laughing and joking, though the Government had assured him that it had no time to attend to the grievances of starving men.
My mother now suggested that a meeting of protest should be held outside, and Mrs. Wolsten-holme Elmy, the oldest worker in the Suffrage movement present, began to speak. The women crowded round to listen, but almost at once the police ordered us away and began striding in and out amongst us and pushing us apart. We thereupon moved to the foot of the Richard I statue, which stands just outside the door of the House of Lords, but again the police intervened, till, at last, after much argument, the Inspector of Police offered to take us to a place where a meeting might be held. Mrs. Pankhurst then called upon Mrs. Martel, as an Australian woman voter, to lead us and, joined by a single Member of Parliament, Mr. Keir Hardie, we marched with the police to Broad Sanctuary, close to the gates of Westminster Abbey. Here we adopted a Resolution condemning the procedure of the House of Commons, which had made it possible for a small minority of opponents to prevent a vote being taken upon the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill, and calling upon the Government to rescue it now and carry it into law. The meeting then dispersed, vowing political vengeance upon the Government if this should not be done.
It will be remembered that during the summer of 1905 it was evident to the most casual observer that the resignation of the Conservative Government could not be long delayed. Mr. Chamberlain’s Tariff Reform proposals were causing dissent in the Cabinet, and the resignation of several Ministers had already taken place. The South African War had brought a measure of overwhelmingly enthusiastic support to the Conservative Government but, as almost always happens in such cases, a reaction had set in, now that the war taxes had to be met. At the same time there was grave depression in the cotton trade, and consequent distress in the industrial districts. In order to cope with the trouble, Mr. Walter Long, on behalf of the Government, had introduced a Bill to provide relief work for the unemployed. This had met with serious opposition from his own party, and it had been subsequently announced that no further time could be found for the discussion of the measure. At this point the dispute which had arisen between the Scottish Free Church and the United Free Church of Scotland had become acute, and on June 7, Mr. Balfour had introduced the Scottish Churches Bill, which was hurried through its various stages and finally passed on July 26. It was urged that the Government ought not to have brought forward this new measure whilst the unemployed workmen Bill, to which they were already committed, had been set aside for lack of time. But Mr. Balfour excused himself by protesting that he had been obliged to carry the Scottish Churches Bill because a “crisis” had arisen.
The unemployed and their leaders now stated that if Mr. Balfour needed a crisis to make him act, they would certainly provide him with a crisis. An uprising on a small scale accordingly took place in Manchester, in the course of which the unemployed, in spite of police prohibition, persisted in holding a meeting in Albert Square. Afterwards they marched in an irregular mass along Market Street, spreading all over the roadway and obstructing the traffic. A struggle with the police ensued, during which four men were arrested. The question of the Manchester “riot,” as it was called, was at once raised by Mr. Keir Hardie as a matter of urgency in the House of Commons and, as a result, it was hastily carried through its remaining stages, though in a modified form.
We of the Women’s Social and Political Union had been much interested by the situation that had arisen, both in regard to the Unemployed and the Scottish Churches, and we determined to profit by the example of those who, by determined and decisive action, had secured a certain measure of consideration for their claims. It was only a question now of how much longer militant tactics were to be delayed, and as to how they were to be inaugurated. A favourable opportunity for their dramatic commencement had not yet presented itself, but there was plenty of necessary propaganda work for the Women’s Social and Political Union to do.
One Sunday evening in June, Mrs. Pankhurst had been invited to speak on Women’s Suffrage to a meeting held under the auspices of the Oldham Independent Labour Party. During the proceedings glees were sung by a choir of men and women cotton operatives, and one of the members of the choir was Annie Kenney, who was afterwards to take so prominent a part in the Votes for Women Movement. Annie Kenney was deeply impressed by all that Mrs. Pankhurst had to say, and shortly afterwards, when my sister Christabel also lectured in Oldham, she asked to be introduced to her. Christabel then asked her to pay a visit to our home in Manchester, and the friendship which was to have such far-reaching results began.
Annie Kenney was born at Lees, near Oldham, She was the child of working-class parents, and, to supplement her father’s earnings, her mother, in addition to all her household cares, had been obliged to go out to work in a cotton mill most of her married life. Annie Kenney herself had early become a wage-earner, for at ten years of age she secured an engagement as a half-timer in one of the Oldham cotton factories. Then, wearing her heavy steel-tipped clogs, her fair hair hanging down her back in a long plait covered by a shawl, she had gone into the hot, crowded spinning mill, and working amid the noisy jarring of the machinery as a “little tenter” at the disposal of three older women, she had learnt to fit into place the big bobbins covered with fleecy strands of soft, raw cotton; and to piece these same fleecy strands when they broke, as they did so often, whilst they were being spun out thinner and stronger. Once, as she seized the broken thread in her tiny fingers, one of them was caught somehow and torn off by the whirling bobbins. Whilst she was still a half-timer she worked alternately, one week from six o’clock in the morning till midday in the mill, and during the afternoon at the elementary school; and the next week she spent the morning at school and four hours of the afternoon in the mill. At thirteen, her school
days had ceased, and she had become a “full-timer,” working in the mill from six o’clock in the morning till six at night.
This premature launching forth into the world of wage-earners had left its mark upon Annie Kenney. Her features had been sharpened by it, and her eager face that flushed so easily was far more deeply lined than are the faces of girls whose childhood has been prolonged. Those wide, wide eyes of hers, so wonderfully blue, though at rare moments they could dance and sparkle like a fountain in the sunshine, were more often filled with pain, anxiety and foreboding, or with a longing restless, searching, unsatisfied and far away. A member of a very large family, Annie had four sisters — Nellie, Kitty, Jennie, and Jessie — who came nearest her in age and had been her companions in the cotton mill. In spite of the fact that they were constantly obliged to rise at four or five in the morning, in order to reach the factory gates at six o’clock, and on returning home were obliged first to help to do the housework and prepare the evening meal for the rest of the family, these girls were all determined to continue their education, and they regularly attended the Oldham night schools. At the time when we first met Annie, Nellie and Kitty, the two eldest of the sisters, had both worked their way out of the cotton mill. Nellie had become a shop assistant, and had soon proved herself so able that she had been put in charge of two of her employer’s shops, whilst Kitty had passed the necessary examinations and had obtained a post as an elementary school teacher, and Jennie, though still in the mill, was studying with the same object. Jessie, who was but sixteen, was learning typewriting and shorthand.
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