Suffragette

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by Emmeline Pankhurst


  ‘Well, my lord, I do want you to realise it. I am not whining about my punishment, I invited it. I deliberately broke the law, not hysterically or emotionally, but of set serious purpose, because I honestly feel it is the only way. Now, I put the responsibility of what is to follow upon you, my lord, as a private citizen, and upon the gentlemen of the jury, as private citizens, and upon all the men in this court – what are you, with your political powers, going to do to end this intolerable situation?

  ‘To the women I have represented, to the women who, in response to my incitement, have faced these terrible consequences, have broken laws, to them, I want to say I am not going to fail them, but to face it as they face it, to go through with it, and I know that they will go on with the fight whether I live or whether I die.

  ‘This movement will go on and on until we have the rights of citizens in this country, as women have in our Colonies, as they will have throughout the civilised world before this woman’s war is ended.

  ‘That is all I have to say.’

  Mr Justice Lush, in passing sentence, said: ‘It is my duty, Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, and a very painful duty it is, to pass what, in my opinion, is a suitable and adequate sentence for the crime of which you have been most properly convicted, having regard to the strong recommendation to mercy by the jury. I quite recognise, as I have already said, that the motives that have actuated you in committing this crime are not the selfish motives that actuate most of the persons who stand in your position, but although you blind your eyes to it, I cannot help pointing out to you that the crime of which you have been convicted is not only a very serious one, but, in spite of your motives, it is, in fact, a wicked one. It is wicked because it not only leads to the destruction of property of persons who have done you no wrong, but in spite of your calculations, it may expose other people to the danger of being maimed or even killed. It is wicked because you are, and have been, luring other people – young women, it may be – to engage in such crimes, possibly to their own ruin; and it is wicked, because you cannot help being alive to it if you would only think.

  ‘You are setting an example to other persons who may have other grievances that they legitimately want to have put right by embarking on a similar scheme to yours, and trying to effect their object by attacking the property, if not the lives, of other people. I know, unfortunately – at least, I feel sure – you will pay no heed to what I say. I only beg of you to think of these things.’

  ‘I have thought of them,’ I interjected.

  ‘Think, if only for one short hour, dispassionately,’ continued the majesty of law. ‘I can only say that, although the sentence I am going to pass must be a severe one, must be adequate to the crime of which you have been found guilty, if you would only realise the wrong you are doing, and the mistake you are making, and would see the error you have committed, and undertake to amend matters by using your influence in a right direction, I would be the first to use all my best endeavours to bring about a mitigation of the sentence I am about to pass.

  ‘I cannot, and I will not, regard your crime as a merely trivial one. It is not. It is a most serious one, and, whatever you may think, it is a wicked one. I have paid regard to the recommendation of the jury. You yourself have stated the maximum sentence which this particular offence is by the legislature thought to deserve. The least sentence I can pass upon you is a sentence of three years’ penal servitude.’

  As soon as the sentence was pronounced the intense silence which had reigned throughout the trial was broken, and an absolute pandemonium broke out among the spectators. At first it was merely a confused and angry murmur of ‘Shame!’ ‘Shame!’ The murmurs quickly swelled into loud and indignant cries, and then from gallery and court there arose a great chorus uttered with the utmost intensity and passion. ‘Shame!’ ‘Shame!’ The women sprang to their feet, in many instances stood on their seats, shouting ‘Shame!’ ‘Shame!’ as I was conducted out of the dock in charge of two wardresses. ‘Keep the flag flying!’ shouted a woman’s voice, and the response came in a chorus: ‘We will!’ ‘Bravo!’ ‘Three cheers for Mrs Pankhurst!’ That was the last I heard of the courtroom protest.

  Afterwards I heard that the noise and confusion was kept up for several minutes longer, the Judge and the police being quite powerless to obtain order. Then the women filed out singing the Women’s Marseillaise –

  March on, march on,

  Face to the dawn,

  The dawn of liberty.

  The Judge flung after their retreating forms the dire threat of prison for any woman who dared repeat such a scene. Threat of prison – to Suffragettes! The women’s song only swelled the louder and the corridors of Old Bailey reverberated with their shouts. Certainly that venerable building had never in its chequered history witnessed such a scene. The great crowd of detectives and police who were on duty seemed actually paralysed by the audacity of the protest, for they made no attempt to intervene.

  At three o’clock, when I left the court by a side entrance in Newgate Street, I found a crowd of women waiting to cheer me. With the two wardresses I entered a four wheeler and was driven to Holloway to begin my hunger strike. Scores of women followed in taxicabs, and when I arrived at the prison gates there was another protest of cheers for the cause and boos for the law. In the midst of all this intense excitement I passed through the grim gates into the twilight of prison, now become a battleground.

  CHAPTER VI

  Prison had indeed been for us a battleground ever since the time when we had solemnly resolved that, as a matter of principle, we would not submit to the rules that bound ordinary offenders against the law. But when I entered Holloway on that April day in 1913, it was with full knowledge that I had before me a far more prolonged struggle than any that the militant suffragists had hitherto faced. I have described the hunger strike, that terrible weapon with which we had repeatedly broken our prison bars. The Government, at their wits’ end to cope with the hunger strikers, and to overcome a situation which had brought the laws of England into such scandalous disrepute, had had recourse to a measure, surely the most savagely devised ever brought before a modern Parliament.

  In March of that year, while I was waiting trial on the charge of conspiring to destroy Mr Lloyd-George’s country house, a bill was introduced into the House of Commons by the Home Secretary, Mr Reginald McKenna, a bill which had for its avowed object the breaking down of the hunger strike. This measure, now universally known as the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’, provided that when a hunger striking suffrage prisoner (the law was frankly admitted to apply only to suffrage prisoners) was certified by the prison doctors to be in danger of death, she could be ordered released on a sort of a ticket of leave for the purpose of regaining strength enough to undergo the remainder of her sentence. Released, she was still a prisoner, the prisoner, or the patient, or the victim, as you may choose to call her, being kept under constant police surveillance. According to the terms of the bill the prisoner was released for a specified number of days, at the expiration of which she was supposed to return to prison on her own account. Says the Act:

  The period of temporary discharge may, if the Secretary of State thinks fit, be extended on a representation of the prisoner that the state of her health renders her unfit to return to prison. If such representation be made, the prisoner shall submit herself, if so required, for medical examination by the medical officer of the above mentioned prison, or other registered medical practitioner appointed by the Secretary of State.

  The prisoner shall notify to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis the place of residence to which she goes on her discharge. She shall not change her residence without giving one clear day’s notice in writing to the Commissioner, specifying the residence to which she is going and she shall not be temporarily absent from her residence for more than twelve hours without giving a like notice, etc.

  The idea of militant suffragists respecting a law of this order is almost humorous, and yet the smile dies before
the pity one feels for the Minister whose confession of failure is embodied in such a measure. Here was a mighty Government weakly resolved that justice to women it would not grant, knowing that submission of women it could not force, and so was willing to compromise with a piece of class legislation absolutely contrary to all of its avowed principles. Said Mr McKenna, pleading in the House for the advancement of his odious measure: ‘At the present time I cannot make these prisoners undergo their sentences without serious risk of death and I want to have power to enable me to compel a prisoner to undergo the sentence, and I want that power in all cases where the prisoner adopts the system of the hunger strike. At the present moment, although I have the power of release, I cannot release a prisoner without a pardon, and I have to discharge them for good. I want the power of releasing a prisoner without a pardon, with the sentence remaining alive… I want to enforce the Law, and I want, if I can, to enforce it without forcible feeding, and without undergoing the risk of someone else’s life.’

  Interrogated by several members, Mr McKenna admitted that the ‘Cat and Mouse’ bill, if passed, would not inevitably do away with forcible feeding, but he promised that the hateful and disgusting process would be resorted to only when ‘absolutely necessary’. We shall see later how hypocritical this representation was.

  Parliament, which had never had time to consider, beyond its initial stages, a women’s suffrage measure, passed the Cat and Mouse Act through both houses within the limits of a few days. It was already law when I entered Holloway on 3rd April 1913, and I grieve to state that many members of the Labour Party, pledged to support woman suffrage, helped to make it into law.

  Of course the Act was, from its inception, treated by the suffragists with the utmost contempt. We had not the slightest intention of assisting Mr McKenna in enforcing unjust sentences against soldiers in the army of freedom, and when the prison doors closed behind me I adopted the hunger strike exactly as though I expected it to prove, as formerly, a means of gaining my liberty.

  That struggle is not a pleasant one to recall. Every possible means of breaking down my resolution was resorted to. The daintiest and most tempting food was placed in my cell. All sorts of arguments were brought to bear against me – the futility of resisting the Cat and Mouse Act, the wickedness of risking suicide – I shall not attempt to record all the arguments. They fell against a blank wall of consciousness, for my thoughts were all very far away from Holloway and all its torments. I knew, what afterwards I learned as a fact, that my imprisonment was followed by the greatest revolutionary outbreak that had been witnessed in England since 1832. From one end of the island to the other the beacons of the women’s revolution blazed night and day. Many country houses – all unoccupied – were fired, the grand stand of Ayr race course was burned to the ground, a bomb was exploded in Oxted Station, London, blowing out walls and windows, some empty railroad carriages were blown up, the glass of thirteen famous paintings in the Manchester Art Gallery were smashed with hammers – these are simply random specimens of the general outbreak of secret guerrilla warfare waged by women to whose liberties every other approach had been barricaded by the Liberal Government of free England. The only answer of the Government was the closing of the British Museum, the National Gallery, Windsor Castle, and other tourist resorts. As for the result on the people of England, that was exactly what we had anticipated. The public were thrown into a state of emotion of insecurity and frightened expectancy. Not yet did they show themselves ready to demand of the Government that the outrages be stopped in the only way they could be stopped – by giving votes to women. I knew that it would be so. Lying in my lonely cell in Holloway, racked with pain, oppressed with increasing weakness, depressed with the heavy responsibility of unknown happenings, I was sadly aware that we were but approaching a far goal. The end, though certain, was still distant. Patience, and still more patience, faith and still more faith, well, we had called upon these souls’ help before and it was certain that they would not fail us at this greatest crisis of all.

  Thus in great anguish of mind and body passed nine terrible days, each one longer and more acutely miserable than the preceding. Towards the last, I was mercifully half unconscious of my surroundings. A curious indifference took possession of my overwrought mind, and it was almost without emotion that I heard, on the morning of the tenth day, that I was to be released temporarily in order to recover my health. The Governor came to my cell and read me my licence, which commanded me to return to Holloway in fifteen days, and meanwhile to observe all the obsequious terms as to informing the police of my movements. With what strength my hands retained I tore the document in strips and dropped it on the floor of the cell. ‘I have no intention,’ I said, ‘of obeying this infamous law. You release me knowing perfectly well that I shall never voluntarily return to any of your prisons.’

  They sent me away, sitting bolt upright in a cab, unmindful of the fact that I was in a dangerous condition of weakness, having lost two stone in weight and suffered seriously from irregularities of heart action. As I left the prison I was gratefully aware of groups of our women standing bravely at the gates, as though enduring a long vigil. As a matter of fact, relays of women had picketed the place night and day during the whole term of my imprisonment. The first pickets were arrested, but as others constantly arrived to fill their places the police finally gave in and allowed the women to march up and down before the prison carrying the flag.

  At the nursing home to which I was conveyed I learned that Annie Kenney, Mrs Drummond, and our staunch friend, Mr George Lansbury, had been arrested during my imprisonment, and that all three had adopted the hunger strike. I also learned on my own account how desperately the Government were striving to make their Cat and Mouse Act – the last stand in their losing campaign – a success. Without regard to the extra expense laid on the unfortunate tax payers of the country, the Government employed a large extra force of police especially for this purpose. As I lay in bed, being assisted by every medical resource to return to life and health, these special police, colloquially termed ‘Cats’, guarded the nursing home as if it were a besieged castle. In the street under my windows two detectives and a constable stood on guard night and day. In a house at right angles to my refuge three more detectives kept constant watch. In the mews at the rear of the house were more detectives, and diligently patrolling the road, as if in expectation of a rescuing regiment, two taxicabs, each with its quota of detectives, guarded the highways.

  All this made recovery slow and difficult. But worse was to come. On 30th April, just as I was beginning to rally somewhat, came the news that the police had swooped down on our headquarters in Kingsway and had arrested the entire official force. Miss Barrett, associate editor of The Suffragette; Miss Lennox, the sub-editor; Miss Lake, business manager; Miss Kerr, office manager, and Mrs Sanders, financial secretary of the Union, were arrested, although not one of them had ever appeared in any militant action. Mr E. G. Clayton, a chemist, was also arrested, accused of furnishing the W.S.P.U. with explosive materials. The offices were thoroughly searched, and, as on a former occasion, stripped of all books and papers. While this was being done another party of police, armed with a special warrant, proceeded to the printing office where our paper, The Suffragette, was published. The printer, Mr Drew, was placed under arrest and the material for the paper, which was to appear on the following day, was seized. By one o’clock in the afternoon the entire plant and the headquarters of the Union were in the hands of the police, and to all appearances the militant movement – temporarily at least – was brought to a full stop. In my state of semi-prostration it at first seemed to me best to let the week’s issue of the paper lapse, but on second thought I decided that even the appearance of surrender was not to be thought of. How we managed it need not here be told, but we actually did, overnight, with hardly any material, except Christabel’s leading article, and with hastily summoned helpers, get out the paper as usual, and side by side with the morning journals w
hich bore front page stories of the suppression of the Suffragette organ, our paper sellers sold The Suffragette. The front page bore, instead of the usual cartoon, the single word in bold faced type ‘RAIDED’, the full story of the police search and the arrests being related in the other pages. Our headquarters, I may say in passing, remained closed less than forty-eight hours. We are so organised that the arrest of leaders does not seriously cripple us. Everyone has an understudy, and when one leader drops out her substitute is ready instantly to take her place.

  In this emergency there appeared as chief organiser in Miss Kenney’s place, Miss Grace Roe, one of the young Suffragettes of whom I, as belonging to the older generation, am so proud. Faced by difficulties as great as the Government could make them, Miss Roe at once showed herself to be equal to the situation, and to have the gift of unswerving loyalty combined with a strong and rapid judgement of things and people. Aiding her was Mrs Dacre Fox, who surprised us all by her amazing ability to act as assistant editor of The Suffragette, manage a host of affairs in the office, and preside at our weekly meetings. Another member of the Union who came prominently to the front at the time of this crisis was Mrs Mansel.

  In two days’ time the office was open and running quite as usual, no outward sign showing the grief and indignation felt for our imprisoned comrades. Most of them refused bail and instantly hunger struck, appearing in court for trial three days later in a pitiful state. Mrs Drummond was so obviously ill and in need of medical attention that she was discharged and was very soon afterwards operated upon. Mr Drew, the printer, was forced to sign an undertaking not to publish the paper again. The others were sentenced to terms varying from six to eighteen months. Mr Clayton was sentenced to twenty-one months, and after desperate resistance, during which he was forcibly fed many times, escaped his prison. The others, following the same example, starved their way to liberty, and have ever since been pursued at intervals and rearrested under the Cat and Mouse Act.

 

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