Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography

meeting, no business sessions, no election of officers. The W.S.P.U. is

simply a suffrage army in the field. It is purely a volunteer army, and no

one is obliged to remain in it.^13

As Rebecca West was to later comment sympathetically, in the midst of her
battle for democracy, Emmeline Pankhurst was obliged, lest that battle should
be lost, to become a dictator.^14
However, it was the Teresa Billington-Greig reading of events, rather than
West’s, that has become dominant since it was in agreement with the socialist-
feminist views of Emmeline’s daughter, Sylvia, and elaborated in her influential
The suffragette movement– ‘Mrs. Pankhurst had called upon the members to
support her as the dictator of the Union. ... Under the autocracy members and
officials could be dismissed as readily as an employer discharges her cook. ... It
was made a point of honour to give unquestioning assent to the decisions of the
leaders.’^15 Although Sylvia also claimed, in a contradictory manner, that her
mother was only ‘nominally the ruler of the Union’, the main work and policy
being directed by Christabel and the Pethick Lawrences, it is the representation
of Emmeline Pankhurst as a dictator and autocrat, which has consistently been
upheld by later historians.^16 But how accurate is it?
Emmeline’s autocratic rule was in theory only since during the years immedi-
ately following the 1907 split she did not choose to exercise any direct personal
control over the WSPU. Although she was consulted on major policy matters,
the daily executive control of the Union was undertaken by Christabel and the
Pethick Lawrences, the three being known as the ‘triumvirate’.^17 By now
Emmeline was constantly travelling around the country, speaking in endless
meetings and leading the by-election campaigning. Like a nomadic evangelist,
she had no settled home but travelled with her belongings packed in a few suit-
cases, staying in hotels, rented flats or the homes of friends and supporters. Even
when in London, she lived in the Inns of Court Hotel since she did not have a
room at Clement’s Inn. Although she often stayed as a weekend guest of the
Pethick Lawrences in their home The mascotat Holmwood, Surrey, the spare
room at their Clement’s Inn flat was occupied not by Emmeline, but Christabel.
When Emmeline appeared briefly at WSPU headquarters, she often felt like an
outsider. As Jessie Kenney recalled:

When Mrs Pankhurst came up from the provinces, she must have

naturally felt a little bit out of things ... when so many secretaries were

flying around and perhaps scarcely knew her. She was always ‘the great

lady’ and liked people to know it. ... A desk was placed for her in

Mrs.Tuke’s room so that she would have the company of Mrs. Tuke,

and the feeling that she was also the head of all departments.^18

But it was in the by-election campaigning that Emmeline’s personal charisma
shone, not in the boring minutiae of day-to-day administration.

AUTOCRAT OF THE WSPU?