E. Sylvia Pankhurst

“ On the deputation went whilst the cheers of their comrades mingled with the deeper answering cheer of the crowd outside. On they went up Victoria Street and all the way from the masses who watched them was heard no single cry against them, nothing but one great cheer. They pressed on, first Mrs. Pankhurst in her light coat, then the two little old ladies and the other women following behind, but just at the corner of St. Margaret's Church a long line of police on horse and foot blocked the road. For a moment there was a strange pause and the crowd was hushed. ”

“ Only one woman spoke at one time and each one merely fired a short, sharp, pertinent interjection; but there were many of them, and, more than that, the raising of each woman's voice was the signal for a wild outburst of fury on the part of the stewards, who sprang upon the interrupter, silenced her by a blow under the chin or an impromptu gag and, after flinging her either to the ground or across the seats, dragged her out head foremost, hitting her again and again. Some members of the audience struck with fists and umbrellas at the women who were being carried past. ”

“ This history of the Women's Suffrage agitation is written at a time when the question is in the very forefront of British politics. What the immediate future holds for those women who are most actively engaged in fighting for their political freedom no one can foretell, but one thing is certain: complete victory for their cause is not far distant.
When the long struggle for the enfranchisement of women is over, those who read the history of the movement will wonder at the blindness that led the Government of the day to obstinately resist so simple and obvious a measure of justice. ”

“ Then the watchword, "Rise up women!" was sounded, and the answer came in a great unanimous shout, "Now," while hundreds of women volunteers ready for Parliament or Prison sprang to their feet.
Mrs. Despard was chosen to lead the deputation, and, as each woman marched out of the Caxton Hall, a copy of the Resolution for the Prime Minister was put into her hand. We formed up in orderly procession, and, amid the cheers of the thousands of men and women who had gathered in sympathy, and with police walking in front of us, we marched into Victoria Street and on towards the House of Commons. ”

“ The wind comes in little playful gusts. The free pigeons are flying about in happy confidence. You notice every variation in their glossy plumage. Some are grey with purple throats, some have black markings on their wings, some are a pale brown colour, some nearly white; one is a deep purple, almost black, with shining white bars on his wings and tail. All are varied—no two are alike. The gaunt prison buildings surround everything, but in all this shimmering brightness, in this sweet, free air, they have lost for the moment their gloomy terror. ”

“ You know how inadequate are the marriage laws to women. You must know, Sir, as I have found out in my experience of public life, how abominable, atrocious, and unjust are the divorce laws as they affect women. You know very well that the married woman has no legal right to the guardianship of her children. Then, too, the illegitimacy laws; you know that a woman sometimes commits the dreadful crime of infanticide, while her partner, the man, who should share her punishment, gets off scot free. ”

“ Once we gained it we clambered hastily on to our lorry and looked around with wondering and astonished gaze. As far as the eye could reach was one vast mass of human beings—not black, as crowds usually are,—but coloured, like a great bed of flowers because of the thousands and thousands of women all dressed in the lightest and daintiest of summer garments, whilst even the men had most of them come out in cool greys and were wearing straw hats. ”

“ And so to these myriads of tired women who rise in the raw dawn and troop to their cheerless factories, and who, when the twilight falls, return not to rest but to the labours of a squalid household, to these the thought of Women's Suffrage, which comes as a sneer to the man about town, comes as a hope and a prayer. Who dares leave that hope unillumined, that prayer unanswered?... For fifty years now woman has stood crying: "I stand for justice—answer, shall I have it?" ”

“ I have seen that men are encouraged by law to take advantage of the helplessness of women. Many women have thought as I have and for many, many years have tried by that influence of which we have so often been reminded to alter these laws, but have found that that influence counts for nothing. When we went to the House of Commons we used to be told, when we were persistent, that Members of Parliament were not responsible to women, they were responsible only to voters, and that their time was too fully occupied to reform those laws, although they agreed that they needed reforming. ”

“ The old cry had been, "You will never rouse women," but she said, "we have done what they thought, and what they hoped, to be impossible; we women are roused." At those words they stopped her with their cheers.
Then Annie Kenney rose to tell the story of her first and only other visit to the Royal Albert Hall, when she had gone there to ask of the newly elected and triumphant Liberal Ministry, a pledge for the enfranchisement of her sex. That night, two years before, she had been received with cries of abuse and howled down by an audience of angry men. ”

“ News of the Women's cry for freedom came to us from North, South, East and West, and we felt ourselves part of a Universal movement. We were keyed up to any sacrifice. We felt that the fate of other women depended upon us. ”

“ May we prize and cherish the great selfless spirit that has been engendered, and, applying it to the purposes of our Government—the nation's housekeeping—the management of our collective affairs, may we, men and women together, not in antagonism, but in comradeship, strive on till we have built up a better civilisation than any that the world has known. ”

“ Nevertheless the old right of the by-standers, the right of the whole people to express their opinion in regard to suggestions put forward by powerful folk and to receive them either with shouts of approval or equally loud cries of dissent still exists and it exists—if it has not been altogether destroyed by the Public Meeting Bill—not merely for men, but for women. ”

“ It is to new men with fresh minds, untrammelled by prejudice and quickened by sympathy, and who are vigorous and true, that I [26] believe that the country will turn with hope. What I ask for them is generous support and a fair chance." The thunder of applause that greeted his final words had scarcely died away when, as if in answer to Sir Edward Grey's appeal and promise, a little white cotton banner, inscribed with the words, "Votes for Women," was put up in the centre of the hall, and a woman was heard asking what the Government would do to make the women politically free. ”

“ I believe that women striving for enfranchisement in other lands and reformers of future days may learn with renewed hope and confidence how the "family party," who in 1905 set out determined to make votes for women the dominant issue of the politics of their time, in but six years drew to their standard the great woman's army of to-day. It is certain that the militant struggle in which this woman's army has engaged and which has come as the climax to the long, patient effort of the earlier pioneers, will rank amongst the great reform movements of the world. ”

“ Lloyd George began to speak of the "people's will," there came a megaphone chorus from a little workman's dwelling close to the hall where the Suffragettes were lying concealed, "Votes for Women," "Votes for Women," "Votes for Women." The stewards rushed to the windows on that side of the hall and shut them hurriedly, but the sound penetrated still for the people of the neighbourhood joined in and supported the megaphones with cheers and cries of "Stick to it, miss, stick to it." ”

“ Cremer's speech, crying fervently that he himself had always believed in Women's Suffrage because, all his life, he had been opposed to slavery in any form, and declaring that "any of God's creatures who are denied a voice in the Government of their country are more or less slaves," and that "men have no right to assume that they are so superior to women, that they alone have the right to govern." ”

“ No, for the right could never have been anything but valueless had the presentation of the petition not been accompanied by the pomp and circumstance, and the dramatic and spectacular character, of a public deputation, and by the influence that only personal pleading can lend. Every scrap of evidence tends to show that the right of petition was to be exercised personally. If it were otherwise why should the Act of Charles II have insisted that the signatories to the petition should be represented by a limited deputation? ”

“ And indeed in those bright spring days at the Skating Rink, though the victory of the franchise was not yet won, some of the fruits of the struggle were already present in the glad comradeship of the workers. Everyone seemed to be full of high spirits, and all were keenly interested in the success of the enterprise and, in spite of the strenuous militant tactics in which they were engaged and of all the propaganda work which they were accomplishing, every branch of the Union and every organising centre, had its stall laden with goods. ”

“ In order for women to get votes they must have votes already. And so the men will bemock and befool them from session to session. Who can wonder if, tired of these gay deceivers, they begin to take the law into their own hands? And public opinion—I warn the Government—public opinion is with the women.... They are unwomanly—and therein consists the martyrdom of the pioneers. They have to lower themselves to the manners of men; they have to be unwomanly in order to promote the cause of womanhood. They have to do the dirty work. ”

“ Pankhurst cried, and we knew that she was thinking of the women she [211] had seen in prison, "I for one, looking round on the sweated and decrepit members of my sex, say that men have had control of these things long enough and that no woman with any spark of womanliness in her will consent to allow this state of things to go on any longer. We are tired of it, we want to be of use and to have the power to make the world a better place both for men and women than it is to-day." ”

“ Others, with strange obliquity of vision, because they did not like the idea of women mixing themselves up in scenes of violence, found it easier to disapprove of the women who had been ill-used than of those who had ill-used them. Besides the unthinking ones, there were also many who had become so much inflamed by Party spirit that their sole idea was to whitewash and bolster up the Liberal leaders and to cast a slur upon the character of any who had dared to turn too fierce a light upon their faults and weaknesses. ”

“ She urged on its behalf that the women of the country should be enfranchised during that very year, either by a clause in the Plural Voting Bill then before Parliament, or by a separate measure. Assuring the Prime Minister that the members of the Union believed that no business could be more pressing than this, she stated calmly and firmly that a growing number of them felt the question of Votes for Women so deeply that they were prepared, if necessary, to sacrifice for it life itself, or what was perhaps even harder, the means by which they lived. ”