advance and the Exeter Hall was hired to take the overflow. At the meeting,
marked with an unprecedented ‘fervency and a determination of spirit’, a reso-
lution was carried expressing indignation that the King’s Speech the previous
day had contained nothing about votes for women and demanding immediate
facilities for such a measure.^60 The charismatic Emmeline rallied her followers
by proposing that a deputation should immediately take the resolution to the
Prime Minister. ‘We are ready’, was the cry of women, amid much cheering.^61 A
deputation of about 400 women sallied forth under the leadership of the elderly
Charlotte Despard, meeting fierce resistance as it neared Westminster Abbey;
foot police punched the women between the shoulders and bumped them in the
back with their knees while mounted police reared their horses over them.
Hour after hour, further contingents of women tried to reach the Commons and
received the same treatment. A group of fifteen women who did manage to
reach the Lobby were promptly arrested when they attempted to hold a
meeting. By 10 p.m., when the mêlée had ended, sixty women had been
arrested, including Charlotte Despard and Christabel and Sylvia. Emmeline
endeavoured to prevent her two daughters from being arrested but was unsuc-
cessful and was herself taken to the police station where no charges were
brought against her. Fred Pethick Lawrence arranged bail for all those arrested,
something that he was regularly to do over the next six years. After the court
hearing the next day, vanloads of women were sent to Holloway since all but
three of the defendants had elected to go to prison rather than pay fines, the
majority being given fourteen-day sentences. Newspaper headlines, such as
those in the Daily News, ‘Raid by 700 Suffragettes, March on the Commons –
60 Arrests, Charge by Mounted Police, Women Trampled Upon and Injured,
Free Fight in Palace Yard’, highlighted the brutality unarmed women had
endured and brought further sympathisers and funds into the WSPU.^62
Despite the violence, Emmeline’s resolve did not weaken. Early in March
1907 she wrote to Sam Robinson, the secretary of the Manchester Central
Branch of the ILP of which she was still a member. ‘We are doing very well all
over the country & demand for meetings & speakers greatly exceeds power to
comply.’^63 She had renewed hope that the campaign might soon be over since,
for the first time ever, the MP who had drawn first place in the private
members’ ballot, W. H. Dickinson, a Liberal, said he would introduce a women’s
suffrage bill. Some weeks earlier, Emmeline had already warned that if the
government did not give facilities for the bill, Union members would not
‘shrink from death if necessary for the success of the movement. We are not
playing at politics in this agitation. If the Government brings out the Horse
Guards, and fires on us, we shall not flinch.’^64 But hopes were dashed again as a
number of professed suffragists in the Commons complained that the bill was
not democratic enough since it would only enfranchise women of the upper
classes. The bill was talked out on 8 March.
In response, the WSPU organised another procession to the Commons from
a second Women’s Parliament, presided over by Emmeline on the afternoon of
TO LONDON