backed by Hardie, was overwhelmingly defeated by 605,000 votes to 268,000, in
favour of an adult suffrage measure. In dejected spirit, an emotional Hardie
announced that if the resolution that had been carried was intended to bind the
action of the Labour Party in the House of Commons, he would have to seri-
ously consider whether he could continue his membership. ‘The party is largely
my own child, and I would not sever myself lightly from what has been my life’s
work’, he explained. ‘But I cannot be untrue to my principles, and I would have
to do so were I not to do my utmost to remove the stigma resting upon our
wives, mothers, and sisters of being accounted unfit for political citizenship.’^56
Emmeline sat silent amongst the stunned delegates, knowing that she could not
advise her old friend to resign from the Labour Party since it would leave him
politically isolated. Faced with the threat of Hardie’s resignation, the party
executive gave its members freedom to choose between women’s enfranchise-
ment on existing terms or adult suffrage, a decision which meant that the
Labour Party itself would take no action at all.^57
With these events still ringing in her ears, Emmeline travelled to the by-
election campaign in Aberdeen early the following month. She was finding
herself in an increasingly difficult position, torn between competing loyalties of
gender and class. As the feminist leader of the women-only WSPU she put
women first, stressing the need to end sex discrimination in the existing fran-
chise laws which meant campaigning for women’s suffrage on the same property
terms that applied to men; as a socialist and an ILP member, she was aware of
the necessity for raising both working-class men and women through the
demand for an adult suffrage measure. At one of Emmeline’s Aberdeen meet-
ings, the two local WSPU organisers added to the confusion by seconding a
women’s suffrage resolution not along official WSPU lines; instead, one organ-
iser referred to adult suffrage and the other to women taxpayers. When the
chair of the meeting, Isabella Mayo, attempted to clarify the situation by
putting the resolution that WSPU members demanded votes for women in
terms of the existing qualifications for men, Emmeline promptly interrupted
her. The resolution should be allowed to stand as a demand for complete adult
female suffrage, she insisted, an argument that caused some angry exchanges
between the women on the platform. Eventually the meeting was closed, the
chair ‘accepting Mrs. Pankhurst’s dictum under protest’.^58 This exchange of
views reveals how Emmeline could swing ‘between the poles’, supporting on
some occasions the ILP rather than WSPU position.^59 But the arguments
Emmeline advanced at Aberdeen were rarely to be voiced by her again. The
time was fast approaching when she would have to leave the ILP.
In the meantime, Emmeline presided over the first ‘Women’s Parliament’,
held at Caxton Hall at three o’clock in the afternoon of 13 February, to mark
the opening the previous day of the new session of the ‘Men’s Parliament’, so
called because women had no share in its election. The plans had been well laid
by Christabel, a brilliant strategist, who had encouraged WSPU organisers to
find women who were willing to go to prison. Tickets were sold out well in
TO LONDON