immediate extension of the Franchise to Women which is included in the offi-
cial program of the party as one of its objects’.^42
The publicity given to these events brought more recruits to the WSPU as
well as interest in the women’s cause from well-known people such as Elizabeth
Robins, an author and ex-actress, especially renowned for her portrayal of Ibsen
heroines. Although born in the USA, Elizabeth now worked mainly in Britain
and was keen to write a suffrage play; she contacted Emmeline and the two met
in mid September to discuss the idea.^43 Then the energetic Emmeline was
rushing off to by-election campaigning in South Wales. On 6 October she wrote
to Elizabeth:
You ought to have been with us in S. Wales last week among the
miners. I heard them calling out ‘We’ll vote for the women’. They are
like great children & tears rolled down their big faces as I told them
stories of poor Welsh girls stranded in our English cities. I had a
perfectly lovely time. 15 meetings in 4 days. I am still as hoarse as a
crow.^44With little respite, Emmeline then travelled to Glasgow for a demonstration on
the 15th; while in that city, she defended the WSPU policy at Cockermouth,
emphasising that if women’s suffrage had been a ‘prominent plank’ of the
Labour Party campaign, they would have supported the Labour candidate.^45
In her 1911 book The suffragette, Sylvia too writes sympathetically of the
Cockermouth policy, pointing out how MPs of all political persuasions would
willingly break the pledges on suffrage that they made to women at the bidding
of their party leaders. In particular, she praises Christabel for initiating the
strategy, the wisdom of which many of the WSPU Committee doubted, and sees
it as evidence ‘of that keen political insight and that indomitable courage and
determination which are so essential to real leadership’. However, in Sylvia’s
The suffragette movement, published twenty years later, a different account is
offered in that the independent policy is now interpreted not as anti-party but
as anti-socialist, a move to the right. Emmeline Pankhurst is condemned as a
weak leader who upholds Christabel ‘as an oracle’, while Christabel is ‘detested
for [her] incipient Toryism’.^46 It is a narrative with which Emmeline would not
have agreed and is not supported by her contemporary statements at the time.
Yet the influential The suffragette movementhas held a formidable sway with
many historians.^47
When parliament reassembled on 23 October 1906, Emmeline was back in
London, leading another deputation to parliament. The Chief Liberal Whip
was sent for and asked to obtain a promise from the Prime Minister that a
woman’s suffrage measure would be considered that session. When a negative
reply was received, a demonstration of protest took place in the Lobby as
woman after woman sprang up on a settee, began to address the crowd and was
dragged down by the police. In the confusion, Emmeline was thrown to the
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