On 21 November, as Emmeline Pethick Lawrence led a deputation from
Caxton Hall to Parliament Square, another smaller group of women, armed
with bags of stones and hammers smashed the windows of not only government
offices but also of the National Liberal Federation, the Guards’ Club, the Daily
Mailand Daily News, Swan and Edgar’s, Lyon’s Tea Shop, Dunn’s Hat Shop, two
hotels, as well as some small businesses, including a tailor’s shop and a bakery.^3
Emmeline Pethick Lawrence was amongst the 223 arrested that day.^4
Christabel, steeped in the history of reform movements, hastily defended the
resumption of militant action and its new direction, namely attacks on private
as well as public property. Men had got their vote by riot and rebellion, she told
her audience at the Savoy Theatre on 23 November, and that was how women
must get it. Amidst applause and loud cheers, she said that in view of what men
had done in the past to win enfranchisement, they had nothing to be ashamed
of for what they did in the window-smashing demonstration.^5 Christabel was
engaging in what Jorgensen-Earp terms ‘reformist terrorism’, whereby it was
hoped that a crisis would be created thus pressurising the government to
respond to the women’s demand.^6
Emmeline Pankhurst in the USA kept in close touch through cable about
the shift in policy and was staying in Cincinnati when she wrote to Alice
Morgan Wright about these developments:
I must return home not later than the 6th January (i.e. sail from New
York). Have just had cable to that effect so the proposed Carnegie Hall
meeting will have to be postponed or cancelled or advanced. If I can
get Albany in between the 1st Dec & time of sailing I will come other-
wise the meeting must be abandoned. Very sorry but the ‘storm centre’
needs me. Mrs Lawrence is in prison & I know not how many more. It
is very hard not be there also!^7The following day, 24 November, Lloyd George, Chancellor of the
Exchequer, gave a provocative speech at Bath, claiming that the Second
Conciliation Bill had been ‘torpedoed’ by the announcement of the Manhood
Suffrage Bill which would make way for a broad and democratic amendment for
women’s suffrage and enfranchise, not a limited class of women just to suit the
Tory canvasser, but also the working man’s wife.^8 Christabel reacted angrily. ‘We
shall never believe that Mr. Lloyd George is a genuine supporter of a democratic
franchise for women until he secures that it be made a Government measure’,
she thundered in an early December issue of Votes for Women. In the same issue,
a message from Emmeline was published, encouraging British women to engage
in a ‘civil war’, the outcome of which would be the withdrawal of the unjust
Manhood Suffrage Bill. ‘I long to be back in the glorious struggle’, she
continued. ‘In a few days I go to Canada to rouse the women of that vast
Dominion of ours to unite with the women of the Mother Country in their fight
for justice. ... I send deep love and gratitude to the women of our splendid
THE WOMEN’S REVOLUTION