& who are making a fight for decent treatment of political prisoners in an
English prison.’ Scott’s reply, which Emmeline hastily sent to Christabel, did
nothing to appease Emmeline’s anger. On 21 July she mockingly told him that
he and other men ‘who profess to support our claim’ are making it quite clear
that they prefer the smallest party advantage to freedom for women:
Had these heroic women who have come to the door of death in their
fast in Holloway been bomb throwing Russians you would have been
full of indignant horror but as they are women of your own race who
have exercised the greatest self restraint & done the very minimum of
violence ... you & other men take it all quite calmly. ...
Can you wonder that we are driven to think that men do not yet
recognise women as human beings suffering from intolerable
grievances largely due to unjust laws imposed upon them by men [?]
It is this apathy & indifference on the part of men who profess to
believe in our Cause that is responsible for all that has happened in the
past & that may happen in the future.^63Emmeline’s critique of her supposed male supporters, however, seemed to do
little to dent her popular appeal to both sexes. The very same day that she
wrote to Scott she was campaigning with Mrs. Massey in the High Peak district
where the audience was very receptive. ‘It is quite surprising’, commented Bruce
Glasier in his diary, ‘to see youngmen andwomen evidently sincerely touched
by their appeal. Everyone credits them with great ability and earnestness.’^64
Despite Gladstone’s accusation that the fourteen hunger strikers had inten-
tionally engaged in kicking and biting some of the wardresses, a claim strongly
denied by the WSPU, there was general optimism amongst the Union leaders
that the hunger strike was an effective strategy for quick release since their legal
advisers had suggested that any resort to forcible feeding by the prison authori-
ties would be illegal.^65 Christabel and Emmeline were soon to be proved sadly
wrong in their faith in the government’s response to the new tactic which had
moved far beyond the civil disobedience of the early days of militancy.
Attempts were now made to either exclude or restrict women from attending
Liberal public meetings. With great ingenuity and courage, suffragettes up and
down the country hid in bushes and under platforms, scaled roofs, let them-
selves down through skylights in order to interrupt meetings with the dreaded
calls, ‘Votes for women!’, ‘Why do you not treat women as political prisoners?’,
‘When are you going to give justice to women?’, ‘Will you not put your Liberal
principles into practice?’^66 Since heckling at public meetings was now difficult
to engage in, some militants made their protest by breaking windows with
bricks and stones as on 20 August when Asquith was speaking at the Sun Hall,
Liverpool.^67 Emmeline was in Glasgow on this day, having been driven to
Scotland a week earlier by Vera Holme, the WSPU’s newly appointed chauffeur,
when Adela was arrested together with Margaret Smith and two young
‘A NEW AND MORE HEROIC PLANE’