give all her time to the women’s cause since any other project she attempted
would pall by its insignificance:
To prevent the cause from being beaten back for a generation, as had
happened to many a cause, a large popular agitation for the vote itself
must be maintained at fever heat, and the fate of the prisoners always
kept in the public eye. The four most prominent had been seized;
others would follow. Every one of us would be needed.^57My reading of that passage is that Sylvia saw the new situation – Christabel
in France and the impending imprisonment of her mother and Emmeline
Pethick Lawrence – as an opportunity to lead the WSPU, to bring it ‘back’, as
she conceived it, to its socialist ‘roots’. This is conjecture, of course, but one of
her biographers also offers such an analysis.^58 Disguised as a nurse, Sylvia
crossed the channel and visited the elder sister (known as ‘Miss Amy Richards’)
who was staying in a flat in the Hotel Cité Bergère (and later in another flat in
the Avenue de la Grande Armée). There is only one account of this meeting
and it is written by Sylvia, nearly twenty years after the event, in The suffragette
movement. According to this source, when Sylvia asked how she could best help
at this time of crisis, Christabel replied, ‘When those who are doing the work
are arrested, you may be needed, and can be called on.’ Further pressed by
Sylvia, Christabel suggested, ‘Well, just speak at a few meetings.’ The tongue-
tied Sylvia, expecting to be asked to lead the WSPU, was hurt by this
exchange, feeling that she was being pushed to the sidelines; she was unable
even to tell her elder sister about her doubts on the new militant policy, fearing
that Christabel would ‘thrust aside whoever might differ from her tactics by a
hair’s breadth’. Sylvia remained silent. ‘I made no comment. I had always been
scrupulous neither to criticize her nor oppose her, to show no open divergence
of opinion in relation to the movement. I was still prepared to uphold her, and
for the sake of unity to subordinate my views in many matters to hers.’ Her one
consolation was that Christabel’s ‘refusal to ask any service of me would leave
me the more free to do what I thought necessary in my own way’.^59
Sylvia had misread the situation. Contrary to the impression given in The
suffragette movement, she had not played a major role in WSPU political life, did
not hold an official position, opposed the policy of political independence from
all men’s political parties, including the Labour Party, and was not regarded as
an engaging speaker. Her major talents lay in artistic work and in writing, and
in these respects she had made a considerable contribution to promoting the
WSPU’s work; furthermore, she was having an affair with a prominent Labour
figure who was a married man, Keir Hardie, an involvement about which both
her mother and Christabel now knew. Bearing all these factors in mind, it is
highly improbable that Sylvia was even considered by Emmeline and Christabel
as a possible leader for the WSPU in a time of crisis. Before she had taken the
boat to France, Christabel had written a letter not to Sylvia but to the faithful
THE WOMEN’S REVOLUTION