The Aftermath of Suffrage

Women, Gender, and Politics in Britain, 1918-1945

Julie V. Gottlieb, Richard Toye

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137333001
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia moderna

This collection explores the aftermath of the Representation of the People Act, which gave some British women the vote. Experts examine the paths taken by both former-suffragists as well as their anti-suffragist adversaries, the practices of suffrage commemoration, and the changing priorities and formations of British feminism in this era.

1

Emmeline Pankhurst in the Aftermath of Suffrage, 1918–1928

June Purvis

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928), the founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which campaigned for the parliamentary vote for women in Edwardian Britain, became the most notorious of the women suffrage leaders.¹ A powerful orator and charismatic yet autocratic leader, she was always in the thick of the action, whether leading her followers in a deputation to Parliament, inciting them to rebellion, supporting their acts of arson and damage to public and private property or undergoing, at great cost to her own health, thirteen imprisonments. Fiery, impetuous, passionate and determined, with a tremendous physical presence, Emmeline Pankhurst was once called the ‘enfant terrible’ of the British women’s suffrage campaign.²

She had founded the women-only WSPU in 1903 to campaign for the parliamentary vote for women on the same terms as it is, or shall be, granted to men. For eleven years, from 1903 to the outbreak of the First World War, on 4 August 1914, when she called an end to all forms of militancy undertaken by her followers, Emmeline Pankhurst and her eldest daughter, Christabel, her co-leader of the suffragette campaign, were the scourge of the British Government. With the advent of war, both women became patriotic feminists, supporting their country in its hour of need and urging all suffragettes of the WSPU to do likewise.³ As Christabel observed, ‘As Suffragettes we could not be pacifists at any price. … To win votes for women national victory was needed for, as Mother said, “what would be the good of a vote without a country to vote in!”’⁴ However, Emmeline and Christabel never lost sight of the women’s suffrage issue during the war years but encouraged women to engage in war work, believing that the eventual reward for such loyalty would be the parliamentary vote.⁵

Emmeline was in Russia on 19 June 1917, when the House of Commons passed a clause in the Representation of the People Bill conferring the parliamentary vote on women over thirty who were householders, wives of householders, occupiers of property of £5 or more annual value, or university graduates. And when she returned to Britain in the autumn of that year, ill and exhausted, she and Christabel relaunched the women-only WSPU as the women-only Women’s Party, an organisation that was to prepare women for their impending citizenship status during wartime and after. But what happened to Emmeline Pankhurst after 6 February 1918, when the Representation of the People Act received the Royal Assent?

It is the aim of this chapter to discuss this issue, placing Emmeline Pankhurst within the social and political context of her time, exploring the various directions that this prominent figure in the suffrage campaign took after partial suffrage for women was won. And as a feminist historian who writes women’s rather than gender history, I will discuss both public and private aspects of her life, which, I hope, will help to situate her within debates about what happened to inter-war British feminism. In particular I will discuss four key themes that are pertinent to the last ten years of her life, from 1918 to 1928 – her leadership of the Women’s Party, life as a hygiene or social purity lecturer in North America, the raising of her four adopted children, and her candidacy for election to parliament as a Conservative.

By the time the Women’s Party was founded in the autumn of 1917, Emmeline who had once been a Liberal and then a member of the Independent Labour Party was profoundly disillusioned with socialism.⁶ She believed it was male centred and, in particular, that pacifist socialism, upheld by many in the Labour Party, had not served the national interest during wartime. As she later explained, she felt that pacifist Labour leaders like Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden, ‘had tried to betray their country from the very outset’.⁷ Nor did the socialism practised by male trade unionists appeal to Emmeline. She had campaigned hard – and successfully – for women’s right to war work, meeting stern opposition from British trade unionists who had not only opposed women’s entry to the munitions factories but also staged strikes, thus limiting productivity. Such action, she believed, was both sexist and unpatriotic. Nor was Emmeline favourably disposed towards Bolshevism. While in Russia she had witnessed the early stages of the Bolshevik revolution and was despondent about its lack of democracy, rule of terror and oppression of ordinary people, 80 per cent of whom were illiterate. She became scornful of so-called workers’ control and rule by committee.⁸ Such views, which Christabel also shared, helped to shape the political programme offered by the Women’s Party which drew up a manifesto signed by the four key members of the organisation, formerly part of the inner circle of the old WSPU – Emmeline Pankhurst, Honorary Treasurer, Christabel Pankhurst, Editor of its official newspaper Britannia, Annie Kenney Honorary Secretary, and Flora Drummond, Chief Organiser.⁹

The Women’s Party was in accord with the established political parties that there was a ‘woman’s vote’ that could be secured, irrespective of class or party.¹⁰ Its manifesto outlined many of the ideas that Emmeline had advocated earlier – the importance of the authority of democratic government, the retaining of British control and ownership of industry, and the strengthening of the British Empire. The aims in regard to the war were anti-pacifist and patriotic – ‘War till victory’ – while in regard to women’s issues, a programme of social reform was advocated that incorporated many of the progressive feminist ideas of the time including equal pay for equal work, equal marriage and divorce laws, equal opportunity of employment, a system of maternity and infant care, co-operative housekeeping and co-operative housing schemes that included central heating, a hot water supply, a central laundry, medical services and – if desired – a crèche, nursery, school, gymnasium and reading room.¹¹

Thus the Women’s Party conflated the winning of the war with the women’s cause, a dual aim that was strongly evident in the advertisement for the large ‘patriotic’ meeting to be held in the Albert Hall on 16 March 1918, in celebration of the women’s suffrage victory. Late in the autumn of that year, Emmeline was caught up in another flurry of excitement. On 21 November 1918, just ten days after the First World War ended, a bill was rushed into law making women eligible to stand for election to Parliament, on equal terms with men, ironically allowing those women aged between twenty-one and thirty years to stand for a Parliament they could not elect.¹² Several friends urged the sixty-year-old Emmeline to offer her candidacy, as a leader of the Woman’s Party. But feeling her age, and not fully recovered from her Russian trip, Emmeline declined. She wanted this particular honour for Christabel, her eldest and favourite daughter, and sought Lloyd George’s help – which he gave. Initially, Christabel was going to stand for the Westbury Division of Wiltshire but switched to the new industrial, working-class constituency of Smethwick in the Midlands. Emmeline campaigned enthusiastically at Smethwick, but Christabel lost the election by just 755 votes to her Labour Party opponent, despite the fact that she had the Coalition Government’s ‘coupon’ or letter of support.¹³ Christabel, who had become a Second Adventist, that is a Christian who is expecting the imminent return of Christ, took the news of her defeat better than her mother who was determined that her talented daughter should have a career in politics. But it was not to be. By July the following year, 1919, the Women’s Party had faded away.

Emmeline’s love and support for her eldest daughter was not the only family matter that impinged on her public political life at this time. She was rarely in touch with her two other biological daughters, Sylvia and Adela, of whom she was deeply ashamed because of their pacifist socialist views.¹⁴ It was not her biological daughters that were on Emmeline’s mind at this particular time in her life but the four female ‘war babies’ she had ‘adopted’ in the autumn of 1915 and given new names – Kathleen King, Flora Mary Gordon, Joan Pembridge and Elizabeth Tudor.¹⁵ Christabel took responsibility for Elizabeth, or Betty as she was known, but Emmeline worried about how she could provide for the other three children. She had few savings and no professional or vocational training that would fit her for employment. She had hoped that members of the WSPU would help to financially support the children, but response from suffragettes had been lukewarm and the few contributions that had been made soon dwindled to nothing. Emmeline’s salary as a key speaker for the Women’s Party had never been enough to cover her personal needs, and now that the Women’s Party had faded away she found herself saddled with its liabilities, especially Tower Cressy, a large house that had been bought to convert into a Montessori day school for the little girls and paying pupils. The venture was not a success. To make matters worse, Emmeline also had to pay the expenses for the house she rented, 51 Clarendon Road, Holland Park, the first settled home she had had since giving up her Manchester home in 1907. Never sentimental, she decided that the best way forward was to relinquish her rented house, present Tower Cressy to Princess Alice as a War Memorial Adoption Home, and undertake a lucrative lecturing tour of North America on the evils of Bolshevism.¹⁶ After all, she knew that public speaking was something that she was good at, the North Americans were usually generous with their donations – and there was an emerging hostility towards communism and socialism in that part of the world. Always optimistic, Emmeline told her dear friend Ethel Smyth that now she was free to look solely after her own interests, she would be able ‘without difficulty’ to earn enough to keep herself and the children for the rest of her days.¹⁷

Illustration 1 Advertisement for Woman’s Party Meeting, 16 March 1918 (June Purvis Private Suffrage Collection)

Illustration 2 Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst campaigning in Smethwick December 1918 (June Purvis Private Suffrage Collection)

Illustration 3 Emmeline Pankhurst c. 1919 with her four ‘adopted’ daughters, from left to right, Elizabeth Tudor, Flora Mary Gordon, Joan Pembridge and Kathleen King (June Purvis Private Suffrage Collection)

Illustration 4 The Unveiling of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Statue, Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster, March 1930 (June Purvis Private Suffrage Collection). It was moved to another site in the Gardens, closer to the Houses of Parliament, in 1956

In September 1919, now aged 61 years old, a time when most women were considered beyond the age of retirement, Emmeline accompanied by Catherine Pine, an old friend from her suffrage days, sailed to New York leaving her adopted girls behind with a French governess. ‘The great work confronting the women now is the suppression of Bolshevism’, she told reporters on her arrival. The Bolsheviks were undemocratic and did not represent the working class as whole but only those members who agreed with their doctrines. Through a form of class...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations, Tables and Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Emmeline Pankhurst in the Aftermath of Suffrage, 1918–1928
• 2 From Prudent Housewife to Empire Shopper: Party Appeals to the Female Voter, 1918–1928
• 3 The Impact of Mass Democracy on British Political Culture, 1918–1939
• 4 The House of Commons in the Aftermath of Suffrage
• 5 Enfranchisement, Feminism and the Modern Woman: Debates in the British Popular Press, 1918–1939
• 6 ‘Doing Great Public Work Privately’: Female Antis in the Interwar Years
• 7 Towards an Archaeology of Interwar Women’s Politics: The Local and the Everyday
• 8 ‘Shut Against the Woman and Workman Alike’: Democratising Foreign Policy Between the Wars
• 9 ‘We Were Done the Moment We Gave Women the Vote’: The Female Franchise Factor and the Munich By-elections, 1938–1939
• 10 ‘They Have Made Their Mark Entirely Out of Proportion to Their Numbers’: Women and Parliamentary Committees, c. 1918–1945
• 11 The Political Autobiographies of Early Women MPs, c.1918–1964
• 12 ‘Women for Westminster,’ Feminism, and the Limits of Non-Partisan Associational Culture
• Selected Bibliography
• Index