My Own Story Part 18

A few weeks later another famous painting, the Sargent portrait of Henry James, was attacked by a Suffragette, who, like Miss Richardson, was sent through the farce of a trial and a prison sentence which she did not serve. By this time practically all the picture galleries and other public galleries and museums had been closed to the public. The Suffragettes had succeeded in large measure in making England unattractive to tourists, and hence unprofitable to the world of business. As we had antic.i.p.ated, the reaction against the Liberal Government began to manifest itself. Questions were asked daily, in the press, in the House of Commons, everywhere, as to the responsibility of the Government in the Suffragette activities. People began to place that responsibility where it belonged, at the doors of the Government, rather than at our own.

Especially did the public begin to contrast the treatment meted out to the rebel women with that accorded to the rebel men of Ulster. For a whole year the Government had been attacking the women's right of free speech, by their refusal to allow the W. S. P. U. to hold public meetings in Hyde Park. The excuse given for this was that we advocated and defended a militant policy. But the Government permitted the Ulster militants to advocate their war policy in Hyde Park, and we determined that, with or without the Government's permission, we should, on the day of the Ulster meeting, hold a suffrage meeting in Hyde Park. General Drummond was announced as the chief speaker at this meeting, and when the day came, militant Ulster men and militant women a.s.sembled in Hyde Park. The militant men were allowed to speak in defence of bloodshed; but General Drummond was arrested before she had uttered more than a few words.

Another proof that the Government had a law of leniency for militant men and a law of persecution for militant women was shown at this time by the case of Miss Dorothy Evans, our organiser in Ulster. She and another Suffragette, Miss Maud Muir, were arrested in Belfast charged with having in their possession a quant.i.ty of explosives. It was well known that there were houses in Belfast that secreted tons of gunpowder and ammunition for the use of the rebels against Home Rule, but none of those houses were entered and searched by the police. The authorities reserved their energies in this direction for the headquarters of the militant women. Naturally enough the two suffrage prisoners, on being arraigned in court, refused to be tried unless the Government proceeded also against the men rebels. The prisoners throughout the proceedings kept up such a disturbance that the trial could not properly go on. When the case was called Miss Evans rose and protested loudly, saying: "I deny your jurisdiction entirely until there are in the dock beside us men who are well known leaders of the Ulster militant movement." Miss Muir joined Miss Evans in her protest and both women were dragged from the court. After an hour's adjournment the trial was resumed, but the women again began to speak, and the case was hurried through in the midst of indescribable din and commotion. The women were sent to prison on remand, and after a four days' hunger and thirst strike were released unconditionally.

The result of this case was a severe outbreak of militancy, three fires destroying Belfast mansions within a few days. Fires blazed almost daily throughout England, a very important instance being the destruction of the Bath Hotel at Felixstowe, valued at 35,000. The two women responsible for this were afterwards arrested, and as their trials were delayed, they were, although unconvicted prisoners, tortured by forcible feeding for several months. This occurred in April, a few weeks before the day appointed for our deputation to the King.

I had appointed May 21st for the deputation, in spite of the fact that the King had, through his Ministers, refused to receive us. Replying to this I had written, again directly to the King, that we utterly denied the const.i.tutional right of Ministers, who not being elected by women were not responsible to them, to stand between ourselves and the Throne, and to prevent us from having an audience of His Majesty. I declared further that we would, on the date announced, present ourselves at the gates of Buckingham Palace to demand an interview.

Following the despatch of this letter my life was made as uncomfortable and as insecure as the Government, through their police department, could contrive. I was not allowed to make a public appearance, but I addressed several huge meetings from the balcony of houses where I had taken refuge. These were all publicly announced, and each time the police, mingling with crowds, made strenuous efforts to arrest me. By strategy, and through the valiant efforts of the bodyguard, I was able each time to make my speech and afterwards to escape from the house. All of these occasions were marked by fierce opposition from the police and splendid courage and resistance on the part of the women.

The deputation to the King was, of course, marked by the Government as an occasion on which I could be arrested, and when, on the day appointed, I led the great deputation of women to the gates of Buckingham Palace, an army of several thousand police were sent out against us. The conduct of the police showed plainly that they had been instructed to repeat the tactics of Black Friday, described in an earlier chapter. Indeed, the violence, brutality and insult of Black Friday were excelled on this day, and at the gates of the King of England. I myself did not suffer so greatly as others, because I had advanced towards the Palace unnoticed by the police, who were looking for me at a more distant point. When I arrived at the gates I was recognised by an Inspector, who at once seized me bodily, and conveyed me to Holloway.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _International News Service_

"ARRESTED AT THE KING'S GATE!" _May, 1914_]

Before the Deputation had gone forth, I had made a short speech to them, warning them of what might happen, and my final message was: "Whatever happens, do not turn back." They did not, and in spite of all the violence inflicted upon them, they went forward, resolved, so long as they were free, not to give up the attempt to reach the Palace. Many arrests were made, and of those arrested many were sent to prison.

Although for the majority, this was the first imprisonment, these brave women adopted the hunger strike, and pa.s.sed seven or eight days without food and water before they were released, weak and ill as may be supposed.

CHAPTER IX

In the weeks following the disgraceful events before Buckingham Palace the Government made several last, desperate efforts to crush the W. S. P. U., to remove all the leaders and to destroy our paper, the _Suffragette_. They issued summonses against Mrs. Drummond, Mrs. Dacre Fox and Miss Grace Roe; they raided our headquarters at Lincolns Inn House; twice they raided other headquarters temporarily in use, not to speak of raids made upon private dwellings where the new leaders, who had risen to take the places of those arrested, were at their work for the organisation. But with each successive raid the disturbances which the Government were able to make in our affairs became less, because we were better able, each time, to provide against them. Every effort made by the Government to suppress the _Suffragette_ failed, and it continued to come out regularly every week. Although the paper was issued regularly, we had to use almost super-human energy to get it distributed. The Government sent to all the great wholesale news agents a letter which was designed to terrorise and bully them into refusing to handle the paper or to sell it to the retail news agents. Temporarily, at any rate, the letter produced in many cases the desired effect, but we overcame the emergency by taking immediate steps to build up a system of distribution which was worked by women themselves, independently of the newspaper trade. We also opened a "Suffragette Defence Fund," to meet the extra expense of publishing and distributing the paper.

Twice more the Government attempted to force me to serve the three years' term of penal servitude, one arrest being made when I was being carried to a meeting in an ambulance. Wholesale arrests and hunger strikes occurred at the same time, but our women continued their work of militancy, and money flowed into our Protest and Defence Fund. At one great meeting in July the fund was increased by nearly 16,000.

But now unmistakable signs began to appear that our long and bitter struggle was drawing to a close. The last resort of the Government of inciting the street mobs against us had been little successful, and we could see in the temper of the public abundant hope that the reaction against the Government, long hoped for by us, had actually begun.

Every day of the militant movement was so extraordinarily full of events and changes that it is difficult to choose a point at which this narrative should be brought to a close. I think, however, that an account of a recent debate which took place in the House of Commons will give the reader the best idea of the complete breakdown of the Government in their effort to crush the women's fight for liberty.

On June 11th, when the House of Commons had gone into a Committee of Supply, Lord Robert Cecil moved a reduction of 100 pounds on the Home Office vote, thus precipitating a discussion of militancy. Lord Robert said that he had read with some surprise that the Government were not dissatisfied with the measures which they had taken to deal with the violent suffragists, and he added with some asperity that the Government took a much more sanguine view of the matter than anybody else in the United Kingdom. The House, Lord Robert went on to declare, would not be in a position to deal with the case satisfactorily unless they realised the devotion of the followers to their leaders, who were almost fully responsible for what was going on. Ministerial cheers greeted this utterance, but they ceased suddenly when the speaker went on to say that these leaders could never have induced their followers to enter upon a career of crime but for the serious mistakes which had been made over and over again by the Government. Among these mistakes Lord Robert cited the shameful treatment of the women on Black Friday, the policy of forcible feeding and the scandal of the different treatment accorded Lady Constance Lytton and "Jane Warton." There were Opposition cheers at this, and they were again raised when Lord Robert deplored the terrible waste of energy, and "admirable material" involved in the militant movement. Although Lord Robert Cecil deemed it unjust as well as futile for Suffragist Members to withhold their support from the woman suffrage movement on account of militancy he himself was in favor of deportation for Suffragettes. At this there were cries of "Where to?" and "Ulster!"

Mr. McKenna replied by first calling attention to the fact that in the militant movement they had a phenomenon "absolutely without precedent in our history." Women in numbers were committing crimes, beginning with window breaking, and proceeding to arson, not with the motives of ordinary criminals, but with the intention of advertising a political cause and of forcing the public to grant their demands. Mr. McKenna continuing said:

"The number of women who commit crimes of that kind is extremely small, but the number of those who sympathise with them is extremely large. One of the difficulties which the police have in detecting this form of crime and in bringing home the offence to the criminal is that the criminals find so many sympathisers among the well-to-do and thoroughly respectable cla.s.ses that the ordinary administration of the law is rendered comparatively impossible. Let me give the House some figures showing the number of women who have been committed to prison for offences since the beginning of the militant agitation in 1906. In that year the total number of commitments to prison was 31, all the persons charged being women. In 1909 the figure rose to 156; in 1911 to 188 (182 women and six men); and in 1912 to 290 (288 women and two men). In 1913 the number dropped to 183, and so far this year it has dropped to 108.

These figures include all commitments to prison and rearrests under the Cat and Mouse Act. What is the obvious lesson to be drawn? Up to 1912 the number of offences committed for which imprisonment was the punishment was steadily increasing, but since the beginning of last year--that is to say, since the new Act came into force--the number of individual offences has been very greatly reduced. On the other hand, we see that the seriousness of the offences is much greater."

This statement, that the number of imprisonments had decreased since the adoption of the Cat and Mouse Act, was of course, incorrect, or at best misleading. The fact was that the number of imprisonments decreased because, where formerly the militants went willingly to prison for their acts, they now escaped prison wherever possible. A comparatively small number of "mice" were ever rearrested by the police.

Mr. McKenna went on to say that he realised fully the growing sense of indignation against the militant suffragists and he added, "Their one hope is, rightly or wrongly, that the well advertised indignation of the public will recoil on the head of the Government."

"And so it will," interpolated a voice.

"My honourable friend," replied Mr. McKenna, "says so it will. I believe that he is mistaken." But he gave no reasons for so believing. Referring to what he called the "recent grave rudenesses which have been committed against the King," Mr. McKenna said: "It is true that all subjects have the right of pet.i.tioning His Majesty, providing the pet.i.tion is couched in respectful terms, but there is no right on the part of the subjects generally to personal audience for the purpose of the presentation of the pet.i.tion or otherwise. It is the duty of the Home Secretary to present all such pet.i.tions to the King, and further to advise His Majesty what action should be taken. It was therefore ridiculous for any Suffragist to a.s.sert that there had been any breach of const.i.tutional propriety on the part of the King in refusing, on the advice of the Home Secretary to receive the deputation."

Also, said Mr. McKenna, in view of the fact that the pet.i.tion for an audience was sent by a person under sentence of penal servitude--myself--it was the plain duty of the Home Secretary to advise the King not to grant it. He referred to the incident, he said, only because it was ill.u.s.trative of the militant's methods of advertising their cause. He gave them credit, he was bound to say, for a certain degree of intelligence in adopting their methods. "No action has been so fruitful of advertis.e.m.e.nt as the recent absurdities which they have perpetrated in relation to the King."

Coming down to the question of methods of meeting and overcoming militancy, Mr. McKenna said that he had received an almost unlimited correspondence on the subject from every section of the public. "Four methods were suggested," said he. "The first is to let them die. (Hear, hear.) That is, I should say, at the present moment, the most popular (laughter), judging by the number of letters I have received. The second is to deport them. (Hear, hear.) The third is to treat them as lunatics.

(Hear, hear.) And the fourth is to give them the franchise. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) I think that is an exhaustive list. I notice each one of them is received with a certain very moderate amount of applause in this House. I hope to give reason why at the present time I think we should not adopt any one of them."

The first suggestion was usually, not always, based on the a.s.sumption that the women would take their food if they knew that the alternative was death. Mr. McKenna read to the House in opposition to that view "the opinion of a great medical expert who had had intimate knowledge of the Suffragettes from the first." "We have to face the fact, therefore, that they would die," continued Mr. McKenna.

"Let me say, also, with actual experience of dealing with suffragists, in many cases they have got in their refusal of food and water beyond the point when they could help themselves, and they have clearly done all that they could do to show their readiness to die.... There are those who hold another a.s.sumption. They think that after one or two deaths in prison militancy would cease. In my judgment there was never a greater delusion. I readily admit that this is the issue upon which I stand and upon which I feel I would fight to the end those who would adopt as their policy to let the prisoners die. So far from putting an end to militancy, I believe it would be the greatest incentive to militancy which could ever happen. For every woman who dies, there would be scores of women who would come forward for the honour, as they would deem it, of earning the crown of martyrdom."

"How do you know?" called out an Opposition member.

"How do I know?" retorted the Home Secretary. "I have had more to do with these women than the honourable member, much more. Those who hold that opinion leave out of account all recognition of the nature of these women. I do not speak in admiration of them. They are hysterical fanatics, but, coupled with their hysterical fanaticism, they have a courage, part of their fanaticism, which undoubtedly stands at nothing, and the honourable member who thinks that they would not come forward, not merely to risk death, but to undergo it, for what they deem the greatest cause on earth is making, in my judgment, a profound mistake.... They would seek death, and I am sure that however strong public opinion outside might be to-day in favour of allowing them to die, when there were twenty, thirty, forty, or more deaths in prison, you would have a violent reaction of public opinion, and the honourable gentleman who now so glibly says 'Let them die' would be among the first to blame the Government for what he would describe as the inhuman att.i.tude they had adopted.

"That policy," continued Mr. McKenna, "could not be adopted without an Act of Parliament. For the reason I have given I have not asked Parliament to remove from prison officials the responsibility under which they now rest for doing their best to keep those committed to their charge alive. But, supposing this legal responsibility were removed from the prison officials, let honourable members for a moment transport themselves in imagination to a prison cell and conceive of a prison doctor, a humane man, standing by watching a woman slowly being done to death by starvation and thirst, knowing that he could help her and that he could keep her alive. Did they think that any doctor would go on with such action, or that we should be able to retain medical men under such conditions in our service? I do not believe it.

"The doctor would think, as I should think if I saw a woman lying there, 'What has been this woman's offence?' It may have been obstructing the police, coupled with the obstinacy derived from fanaticism which leads her to refuse food and water. Obstructing the police and she is to die!

I could not distinguish, and no Home Secretary could ever say, that this woman should be left to die and that that woman should not. Once we were committed to a policy of allowing them to die if they did not take their food we should have to go on with it, and we should have woman after woman whose only offence may have been obstructing the police, breaking a window, or even burning down an empty house, dying because she was obstinate. I do not believe that that is a policy which on consideration will ever recommend itself to the British people, and I am bound to say for myself I could never take a hand in carrying that policy out."

(Cheers.)

Lord Robert Cecil's favourite remedy of deportation Mr. McKenna dismissed on the grounds that this would be merely removing the difficulty to some other country than Great Britain. If the suggested distant island were treated as a prison the women would hunger strike there as they did in English prisons. If the island were not treated as a prison, the Suffragettes' rich friends would come and rescue them in yachts.

The suggestion that the militants be treated as lunatics was also dismissed as impossible. Admitting that he had tried to get them certified as lunatics and had failed because the medical profession would not consent to such a course, Mr. McKenna said that he could not, contrary to the advice of the doctors, get certification by Act of Parliament. "There remains," said Mr. McKenna, "the last proposal, that we should give them the franchise."

"That is the right one," exclaimed Mr. William Redmond, but the Home Secretary replied:

"Whatever may be said as to the merits or demerits of that proposal, it is clearly not one I can discuss now in Committee of Supply. I am not responsible, as Home Secretary, for the state of the law on the franchise, nor is there any occasion for me to express or conceal my own opinions on the point; but I certainly do not think, and I am sure the Committee will agree with me, that that could be seriously treated as a remedy for the existing state of lawlessness."

Coming at last to the constructive part of his speech Mr. McKenna told the House of Commons that the Government had one last resort, which was to take legal proceedings against subscribers to the funds of the W. S. P. U. The funds of the society, he said, were undoubtedly beyond the arm of the British law. But the Government were in hopes of stopping future subscriptions. "We are now not without hope," he concluded, "that we have evidence which will enable us to proceed against the subscribers" (loud cheers) "in civil action, and if we succeed the subscribers will become personally liable for all the damage done."

(Cheers.) "It is a question of evidence.... I have further directed that the question should be considered whether the subscribers could not be proceeded against criminally as well as by civil action." (Cheers.) "We have only been able to obtain this evidence by our now not infrequent raids upon the offices, and such property as we can get at of the society.... A year ago a raid was made on the offices of the society, but we obtained no such evidence. If we succeed in making the subscribers personally responsible individually for the whole damage done I have no doubt that the insurance companies will quickly follow the example set them by the Government, and in turn bring actions to recover the cost which has been thrown upon them. If that is done I have no doubt the days of militancy are over.

"The militants live only by the subscriptions of rich women" (cheers) "who themselves enjoy all the advantages of wealth secured for them by the labour of others" (cheers) "and use their wealth against the interests of society, paying their unfortunate victims to undergo all the horrors of a hunger and thirst strike in the commission of a crime.

Whatever feelings we may have against the wretched women who for 30s.

and 2 a week go about the country burning and destroying, what must our feelings be for the women who give their money to induce the perpetration of these crimes and leave their sisters to undergo the punishment while they live in luxury?" (Cheers.) "If we can succeed against them we will spare no pains. If the action is successful in the total destruction of the means of revenue of the Women's Social and Political Union I think we shall see the last of the power of Mrs.

Pankhurst and her friends." (Cheers.)

In the general debate which followed the Government were obliged to listen to very severe criticisms of their past and present policy towards the militant women. Mr. Keir Hardie said in part:

"We may not to-day discuss the question of the franchise, but surely it was possible for the Home Secretary, without any transgression on the rules of the House, to have held out just a ray of hope for the future as to the intentions of the Government in regard to this most urgent question. On that point, may I say that I am not one of those who believe that a right thing should be withheld because some of the advocates of it resort to weapons of which we do not approve. That note has been sounded more than once, and if it be true, and it is true, that a section of the public outside are strongly opposed to this conduct, it is equally true that the bulk of the people look with a very calm and indifferent eye upon what is happening so long as the vote is withheld from women."

Mr. Hardie concluded by regretting that the House, instead of discussing Woman Suffrage, was discussing methods of penalising militant women.

Mr. Rupert Gwynne said: "n.o.body is in a more ridiculous position than the members on the Treasury Bench. They cannot address a meeting, or go to a railway station, or even get into a taxicab, without having detectives with them. Even if they like it, we, the public do not, because we have to pay for it. It is not worth the expense that it costs to have a detective staff following Cabinet Ministers wherever they go, whether in a private or a public capacity.

"Further," said Mr. Gwynne, "if the Home Secretary is correct in saying that these women are prepared to die, and invite death, in order to advertise their devotion to their cause, does he really think they are going to mind if their funds are attached?"

Another friend of the Suffragists, Mr. Wedgwood said: "We are dealing with a problem which is a very serious one indeed. To my mind, when you find a large body of public opinion, and a large number of people capable of going to these lengths, there is only one thing for a respectable House of Commons to do, and that is to consider very closely and clearly whether the complaints of those who complain are or are not justified. We are not justified in acting in panic. What it is our duty to do is to consider the rights and wrongs of these people who have acted in this way. I attribute myself no value to the vote, but I do think that when we seriously consider the question of Woman Suffrage, which has not been done by this House up to the present, we should remember that when you see people capable of this amount of self-sacrifice, that the one duty of the House of Commons is not to stamp the iron heel upon them, but to see how far their cause is just, and to act according to justice."

When such a debate as this was possible in the House of Commons, it must be plain to every disinterested reader that militancy never set the cause of suffrage back, but on the contrary, set it forward at least half a century. When I remember how that same House of Commons, a few years ago, treated the mention of woman suffrage with scorn and contempt, how they permitted the most insulting things to be said of the women who were begging for their political freedom, how, with indecent laughter and coa.r.s.e jokes they allowed suffrage bills to be talked out, I cannot but marvel at the change our militancy so quickly brought about. Mr. McKenna's speech was in itself a token of the complete surrender of the Government.

Of course the promise of the Home Secretary that subscribers to our funds should, if possible, be held legally responsible for damage done to private property by the Suffragettes, was never meant to be adhered to. It was, in fact, a perfectly absurd promise, and I think that very few Members of Parliament were deceived by it. Our subscribers can always remain anonymous if they choose, and if it should ever be possible to attack them for our deeds, they would naturally take refuge behind that privilege.