movement who wore ‘evening dresses’ at the London At Homes. ‘Is this
intended to debar servants, laundresses, &c.? Unless all women workers force
themselves into the Suffragist movement before the vote is won, and throw
their weight of their influence on the side of the workers, we may find ourselves
eventually dominated and exploited.’^85
Emmeline was not immune to these issues. Despite her resignation from the
ILP, she never lost her deep compassion for the plight of poor women and of the
necessity for social reform. Neither did she lose her links with the socialist
movement, although the ties inevitably became less close. The claims of
socialist historians Garner and Pugh that the 1907 split reflected the growing
conservatism of Emmeline and Christabel, ‘a straightforward left and right split’,
as Garner terms it, a claim that is probably based on Sylvia Pankhurst’s repre-
sentation of her mother, must be challenged.^86 Many of the reforms that
Emmeline wanted were those that socialists advocated too and many of the
rank-and-file suffragettes with whom she worked retained, at the local level,
membership of both the ILP and the WSPU.^87 As Leneman has pointed out, in
Scotland, where Emmeline Pankhurst was known, there were socialist women
such as Bessie Stewart, Agnes Husband and Anna Munro in the WFL, but
many of the ‘keenest socialists’, such as Mary Phillips, Janie Allan and later,
Jessie Stephen and Helen Crawfurd, were in the WSPU.^88 Similar patterns were
undoubtedly repeated elsewhere, as Cowman found in Liverpool where the
WSPU branch was founded by Mrs. Morissey, a socialist.^89 For Emmeline
Pankhurst, as for many of these women, votes for women was a women’s ques-
tion, not a class question. The first issue of Votes for Womenhad broadcast this
message loud and clear – ‘Come and join us, whatever your age, whatever your
class, whatever your political inclination ... if you have any class feeling you
must leave that behind when you come into this movement. For the women
who are in our ranks know no barriers of class distinction.’^90 Nevertheless, the
comments of women like Lisbeth Simms and Nellie Best reveal that how
different social classes related to each other was often a problematic issue, espe-
cially for some working-class women. While middle-class women could exercise
and enjoy the economic and cultural capital of their class background, working-
class women often struggled to realise their power.
After her campaign in the North East had ended, Emmeline travelled back
down to London in order to greet at the prison gates of Holloway on 16
September the four women – Vera Wentworth, Maud Joachim, Elsie Howey
and Florence Haig – who had served the longest and most severe sentences yet
inflicted upon any of the suffragettes, three months. She considered it impor-
tant to be there since she had missed the novel breakfast party for Edith New
and Mary Leigh, a spectacular event that the leaders of the WSPU now
regarded as very significant for making converts to their cause. As Emmeline
Pethick Lawrence emphasised, ‘The sight of the women who have suffered so
bravely, and their words of greeting to the world as they come back to it, must
go straight to the heart of everyone present, whether previously friend or foe to
AUTOCRAT OF THE WSPU?