Walk, Chelsea, but with the Pethick Lawrences, at Clement’s Inn. She
continued to live with them for the next six years.
Emmeline was still living in Manchester, but active in by-election
campaigns throughout the year. She does not appear to have been present at
the campaign in Cockermouth, in Cumberland, due to poll on 3 August, where
Christabel first put into effect the WSPU policy of independence from all polit-
ical parties, including the Labour Party, by opposing all parliamentary
candidates of any political persuasion. The move may have been motivated by
the growing support within the ILP and socialist movement for adult rather
than women’s suffrage,^37 and especially by the reluctance of the Labour candi-
date, Robert Smillie, ‘to push the cause of women to the front’.^38 Christabel
believed that Labour parliamentary candidates all too readily dropped the
claims of women in order to be elected; further, a pledge to women’s suffrage by
successful candidates, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal, was useless
since MPs would always give priority to their own party line. Christabel was
determined that the WSPU should not become ‘a frill on the sleeve of any
political party’ but that it should ‘rally women of all three parties and women of
no party, and unite them as one independent force’.^39 Her reaffirmation of the
WSPU’s ‘independent’ stance, supported by fellow campaigner, Teresa
Billington, nevertheless created uncomfortable political choices for some
socialist feminists. Mary Gawthorpe, who represented the Women’s Labour
League and was there to speak for Smillie, although very sympathetic to the
WSPU, turned down their invitation to join them.^40 When the Conservative
candidate was returned with 4,595 votes, Smillie polling only 1,436, the defeat
was blamed on the WSPU.
Emmeline was quick to defend the new policy while also reasserting her
commitment to socialism, a socialism that was based on equality between men
and women and broader than formal Labour politics:
I am a Socialist ... but I am also a democrat: I believe that human
freedom should precede social organisation, that no social state
deserves to succeed unless it is established with the consent of all
sections of the community.
For any form of Socialism to be worthy of the name, it must be
established by men and women working together.
I go further, I say that men have no rightto make laws affecting
women until women are free and have power to voice their opinions.^41Emmeline also made sure that she attended, with Christabel, a meeting of
the Manchester Central Branch of the ILP, held on 4 September 1906, when a
motion proposed by the Manchester and Salford ILP Branch to expel Christabel
and Teresa from the party was debated. Christabel defended the new policy so
successfully that a resolution was passed, by 18 votes to 8, not to expel the
women on the ground that they ‘have simply endeavoured to carry out the
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