The Conciliation Bill was debated on 5th May and passed its second reading by the enormous majority of 137. And now the public and a section of the press united in a strong demand that the Government yield to the undoubted will of the House and grant facilities to the bill. The Conciliation Committee sent a deputation of members to the Prime Minister to remind him of his pre-election promise that the House of Commons should have an opportunity of dealing with the whole question of woman suffrage, but they succeeded only in getting his assurance that he had the matter under consideration. Late in the month the announcement was made in the House that the Government would not grant facilities during that session, but, since the new bill fulfilled the conditions named by the Prime Minister, and was now capable of amendment, the Government recognised it to be their duty to grant facilities in some session of the present Parliament. They would be prepared next session, when the bill had been again read for the second time, either as a result of obtaining a good place in the ballot, or (if that did not happen) by a grant of a Government day for the purpose, to give a week, which they understood to be the time suggested as reasonable by the promoters for its further stages.
This pledge was made in order to deter the W.S.P.U. from making a militant demonstration in connection with the coronation of the King.
Keir Hardie asked if the Government would, by means of a closure or otherwise, make certain that the bill would go through in the week, and the Prime Minister replied, ‘No, I cannot give an assurance of that kind. After all, it is a problem of the very greatest magnitude.’
This reply seemed to make the Government’s pledge practically worthless. The Conciliation Committee also realised the possibilities of the bill being talked out, and Lord Lytton wrote to Mr Asquith and asked him for assurances that the facilities offered were intended not for academic discussion but for effective opportunity for carrying the bill. He also asked that the week offered should not be construed rigidly but that, providing the committee stage were got through in the time, additional days for the report and third reading stages might be forthcoming. Reasonable opportunity for making use of the closure was also asked. To Lord Lytton’s letter the Prime Minister replied as follows:
My dear Lytton – In reply to your letter on the subject of the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill, I would refer you to some observations recently made in a speech at the National Liberal Club by Sir Edward Grey, which accurately expresses the intention of the Government.
It follows (to answer your specific inquiries), that the ‘week’ offered will be interpreted with reasonable elasticity, that the Government will interpose no reasonable obstacle to the proper use of the closure, and that if (as you suggest) the bill gets through committee in the time proposed, the extra days required for report and third reading will not be refused.
The Government, though divided in opinion on the merits of the bill, are unanimous in their determination to give effect, not only in the letter but in the spirit, to the promise in regard to facilities which I made on their behalf before the last general election.
Yours etc.
H.H. Asquith.
Sceptical up to this point, the W.S.P.U. was now convinced that the Government were sincere in their promise to give the bill full facilities in the following year. We held a joyful mass meeting in Queen’s Hall and I again declared that warfare against the Government was at an end. Our new policy was the inauguration of a great holiday campaign, with the object of making victory in 1912 absolutely certain. Electors must be aroused, members of Parliament held to their allegiance. Women must be organised in order that questions that vitally affect the social welfare of the country might be placed before them. I chose Scotland and Wales as the scenes of my holiday labours.
I may say that our confidence was fully shared by the public at large. The belief in Mr Asquith’s pledge was accurately reflected in a leader published in The Nation, which said: ‘From the moment the Prime Minister signed the frank and ungrudging letter to Lord Lytton which appeared in last Saturday’s newspapers, women became, in all but the legal formality, voters and citizens. For at least two years, if not for longer, nothing has been lacking save a full and fair opportunity for the House of Commons to translate its convictions into the precise language of a statute. That opportunity has been promised for next session and promised in terms and under conditions which ensure success.’
The only thing, as we thought, that we had to fear were wrecking amendments to the bill, and in the new by-election policy which we adopted we worked against all candidates of every party who would refuse to promise, not only to support the Conciliation Committee to carry the bill, but also to vote against any amendment the committee thought dangerous. We believed that we had covered every possibility of disaster. But we had something yet to learn of the treachery of the Asquith Ministry and their capacity for cold-blooded lying.
Mr Lloyd-George from the first was an open enemy of the bill, but since we had no doubt of the sincerity of the Prime Minister, we could only conclude that Mr Lloyd-George had detached himself from the main body of the Government and had become the self-constituted leader of the opposition. In an address to a large Liberal group Mr Lloyd-George advised that Liberal members be asked to ballot for a place for a ‘democratic measure’, in order that such a measure might claim the Prime Minister’s pledge for facilities next session. In one or two other speeches he made vague allusions to the possibilities of introducing another suffrage bill. His own idea was to amend the bill to give a vote to wives of all electors – making married women voters in virtue of their husband’s qualification. The inevitable effect of such an amendment would be to wreck the bill, since it would have enfranchised about 6,000,000 women in addition to the million and a half who would benefit by the original terms of the bill. Such a wholesale addition to the electorate was never known in England; the number enfranchised by the Reform Bill of 1832 being hardly more than half a million. The Reform Bill of 1867 admitted a million new voters, and that of 1884 perhaps two millions. The absurdity of Mr Lloyd-George’s proposition was such that we did not regard it seriously. We did not allow his opposition to give us serious alarm until a day in August when a Welsh member, Mr Leif Jones, asked the Prime Minister from the floor of the House, whether he was aware that his promise for facilities for the Conciliation Bill in the next session was being claimed exclusively for that bill, and asked further for a statement that the promised facilities would be equally granted to any other suffrage bill that might secure a second reading and was capable of amendment. Mr Lloyd-George, speaking for the Government, replied that they could not undertake to give facilities to more than one bill on the same subject, but that any bill which, satisfying these tests, secured a second reading, would be treated by them as falling within their engagements.
Astounded at this plain evasion of a sacred promise, Lord Lytton again wrote to the Prime Minister, reviewing the entire matter, and asking for another statement of the Government’s intentions. The following is the text of Mr Asquith’s reply:
23rd August 1911
My dear Lytton – I have no hesitation in saying that the promises made by, and on behalf of the Government, in regard to giving facilities to the Conciliation Bill, will be strictly adhered to, both in letter and in spirit.
Yours sincerely,
H.H. Asquith.
Again we were reassured, and our confidence in the Premier’s pledge remained unshaken throughout the campaign, although Mr Lloyd-George continued to throw out hints that the promises of facilities for the bill were altogether illusory. We could not believe him, and when, two months later, I was asked in America: ‘When will English women vote?’ I replied with perfect conviction, ‘Next year.’
This was in Louisville, Kentucky, where I attended the 1911 Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. I remember this third visit to the United States with especial pleasure. I was the guest in New York of Dr and Mrs John Winters Brannan, and through the cour
tesy of Dr Brannan, who is at the head of all the city hospitals, I saw something of the penal system and the institutional life of America. We visited the workhouse and the penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island, and although I am told that these places are not regarded as model institutions, I can assure my readers that they are infinitely superior to the English prisons where women are punished for trying to win their political freedom. In the American prisons, much as they lacked in some essentials, I saw no solitary confinement, no rule of silence, no deadly air of officialdom. The food was good and varied, and above all there was an air of kindness and good feeling between the officials and the prisoners that is almost wholly lacking in England.
But, after all, in the United States as in other countries, the problem of the relations between unfranchised women and the State remains unsolved and unsatisfactory. One night my friends took me to that sombre and terrible institution, the Night Court for Women. We sat on the bench with the magistrate, and he very courteously explained everything to us. The whole business was heart-breaking. All the women, with one exception – an old drunkard – were charged with solicitation. Most of them were of high type by nature. It all seemed so hopeless, and it was clear that they were victims of an evil system. Their conviction was a foregone conclusion.
The magistrate said that in most cases the reason for their coming there was economic. One case of a little cigar maker, who said very simply that she only went on the streets when out of work, and that when in work she earned $8 a week, was very tragic and touching. I could not keep the Night Court out of my speeches after that. The whole dreadful injustice of women’s lives seemed mirrored in that place.
I went as far west as the Pacific Coast on this visit, spending Christmas day in Seattle, and for the first time seeing a community where women and men existed on terms of exact equality. It was a delightful experience. As I wrote home to our members, the men of the western States seemed to my eyes eager, earnest, rough men, building a great community in a great hurry, but never have I seen greater respect, courtesy and chivalry shown to women than in that one Suffrage State it has been my privilege to visit.
I am getting a little ahead of my story, however. It was in November, when I was in the city of Minneapolis, that a crushing blow descended on the English suffragists. I learned of this through cabled despatches in the newspapers and from private cables, and was so staggered that I could scarcely command myself sufficiently to fill my immediate engagements. This was the news, that the Government had broken their plighted word and had deliberately destroyed the Conciliation Bill. My first wild thought, on hearing of this act of treachery, was to cancel all engagements and return to England, but my final decision to remain afterwards proved the right one, because the women at home, without a moment’s loss of time, struck the answering blow, guided by that insight which has been characteristic of every act of the members of our Union. I did not return to England until 11th January 1912, and by that time great deeds had been done. Our movement had entered upon a new and more vigorous stage of militancy.
BOOK III
THE WOMEN’S REVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
Parliament had reassembled on 25th October 1911, and the first move on the part of the Government was, to say the least of it, rather unpropitious. The Prime Minister submitted two motions, the first one empowering them to take all the time of the House during the remainder of the session, and the second guillotining discussion on the Insurance Bill so as to force the measure through before Christmas. One day only was allotted to the clauses relating to women in that bill. These clauses were notoriously unfair; they provided for sickness insurance of about four million women and unemployment insurance of no women at all. Under the provision of the bill eleven million men were ensured against sickness and about two and a half million against unemployment. Women were given lower benefits for the same premium as men, and premiums paid out of the family income were credited solely to the men’s account. The bill as drafted provided no form of insurance for wives, mothers and daughters who spent their lives at home working for the family. It penalised women for staying in the home, which most men agree is women’s only legitimate sphere of action. The amended bill grudgingly allowed aside from maternity benefits, a small insurance, on rather difficult terms, for workingmen’s wives.
Thus the re-elected Government’s first utterance to women was one of contempt; and this was followed, on 7th November, by the almost incredible announcement that the Government intended, at the next session, to introduce a manhood suffrage bill. This announcement was not made in the House of Commons, but to a deputation of men from the People’s Suffrage Federation, a small group of people who advocated universal adult suffrage. The deputation, which was very privately arranged for, was received by Mr Asquith, and the then Master of Elibank (Chief Liberal Whip). The spokesman asked Mr Asquith to bring in a Government measure for universal adult suffrage, including adult women. The Prime Minister replied that the Government had pledged facilities for the Conciliation Bill, which was as far as they were prepared to go in the matter of women’s suffrage. But, he added, the Government intended in the next session to introduce and to pass through all its stages a genuine reform bill which would sweep away existing qualifications for the franchise, and substitute a single qualification of residence. The bill would apply to adult males only, but it would be so framed as to be open to a woman suffrage amendment in case the House of Commons desired to make that extension and amendment.
This portentous announcement came like a bolt from the blue, and there was strong condemnation of the Government’s treachery to women. Said the Saturday Review:
With absolutely no demand, no ghost of a demand, for more votes for men, and with – beyond all cavil – a very strong demand for votes for women, the Government announce their Manhood Suffrage Bill and carefully evade the other question! For a naked, avowed plan of gerrymandering no Government surely ever did beat this one.
The Daily Mail said that the ‘policy which Mr Asquith proposes is absolutely indefensible’. And the Evening Standard and Globe said: ‘We are no friends of female suffrage, but anything more contemptible than the attitude assumed by the Government it is difficult to imagine.’
If the Government hoped to deceive anyone by their dishonest reference to the possibility of a woman suffrage amendment, they were disappointed. Said the Evening News:
Mr Asquith’s bombshell will blow the Conciliation Bill to smithereens, for it is impossible to have a manhood suffrage for men and a property qualification for women. True, the Premier consents to leave the question of women’s suffrage to the House, but he knows well enough what the decision of the House will be. The Conciliation Bill had a chance, but the larger measure has none at all.
I have quoted these newspaper leaders to show you that our opinion of the Government’s action was shared even by the press. Universal suffrage in a country where women are in a majority of one million is not likely to happen in the lifetime of any reader of this volume, and the Government’s generous offer of a possible amendment was nothing more than a gratuitous insult to the suffragists.
The truce, naturally, came to an abrupt end. The W.S.P.U. wrote to the Prime Minister, saying that consternation had been aroused by the Government’s announcement, and that it had been decided accordingly to send a deputation representing the Women’s Social and Political Union to wait upon himself and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the evening of 21st November. The purpose of the deputation was to demand that the proposed manhood suffrage bill be abandoned, and that in its place should be introduced a Government measure giving equal franchise rights to men and women. A similar letter was despatched to Mr Lloyd-George.
Six times before on occasions of crisis had the W.S.P.U. requested an interview with Mr Asquith, and each time they had been refused. This time the Prime Minister replied that he had decided to receive a deputation of the various suffrage societies on 17th November, ‘including your own society,
if you desire it’. It was proposed that each society appoint four representatives as members of the deputation which would be received by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Nine suffrage societies sent representatives to the meeting, our own representatives being Christabel Pankhurst, Mrs Pethick Lawrence, Miss Annie Kenney, Lady Constance Lytton and Miss Elizabeth Robins. Christabel and Mrs Lawrence spoke for the Union, and they did not hesitate to accuse the two Ministers to their faces of having grossly tricked and falsely misled women. Mr Asquith, in his reply to the deputation, resented these imputations.
He had kept his pledge, he insisted, in regard to the Conciliation Bill. He was perfectly willing to give facilities to the bill, if the women preferred that to an amendment to his reform bill. Moreover, he denied that he had made any new announcement. As far back as 1908 he had distinctly declared that the Government regarded it as a sacred duty to bring forward a manhood suffrage bill before that Parliament came to an end. It was true that the Government did not carry out that binding obligation, and it was also true that until the present time nothing more was ever said about a manhood suffrage bill, but that was not the Government’s fault. The crisis of the Lords’ veto, had momentarily displaced the bill. Now he merely proposed to fulfil his promise made in 1908, and also his promise about giving facilities to the Conciliation Bill. He was ready to keep both promises. Well he knew that those promises were incompatible, that the fulfilment of both was therefore impossible, and Christabel told him so bluntly and fearlessly. ‘We are not satisfied,’ she warned him, and the Prime Minister said acidly: ‘I did not expect to satisfy you.’
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