End, a possible factor that neither Romero nor Winslow mention.^18 Whatever
the ‘facts’ at the time, a disappointed Sylvia, writing many years later in The
suffragette movement, spoke disparagingly of how ‘Mrs. Pankhurst ... took no
part in the organization of the [Lansbury] campaign. She devoted herself purely
to speaking at the meetings arranged for her.’^19
The contemporary records reveal that Emmeline spoke tirelessly on Lansbury’s
behalf. Although other groupings such as the NUWSS, the WFL and the Men’s
League for Women’s Suffrage also had offices and speakers in the district, it was
Emmeline, regarded as ‘one of England’s finest orators’, who grabbed the head-
lines.^20 The Union leader, who wanted the vote as a tool for social reform, shone
particularly when she spoke at one crowded meeting, in a hall packed with very
poor women who had brought their little children and fretful babies with them.
For Beatrice Harraden, it was an occasion she would never forget. ‘It is my belief
that one has to see and hear Mrs. Pankhurst with the very poorest class of women
in order to have seen and heard her at her very best’, she wrote. ‘The passionate
and yet tender concern for her own sex would seem to be at its finest expression,
and her cry for justice at its truest vibration when she stands amongst these
women, whose sufferings and disadvantages she knows.’^21 But it was not just
compassion that fired Emmeline’s oratory. She was a seasoned campaigner, skilled
in the handling of an audience. When she was asked, ‘Why does Lansbury stand
up for the women instead of for the poor?’, Emmeline replied with a counter-
question, ‘Who are the people who are working for a penny and for a halfpenny
an hour?’ Immediately women in the audience cried out, ‘Me! Me!’^22
But rhetoric could not win the day in an election campaign where the
WSPU and the Poplar Labour Representation Committee, which had supported
Lansbury, were unable to co-operate and a plethora of voices on his behalf
produced ‘ideological babel’.^23 On election day, 26 November, Lansbury lost his
seat by 751 votes to the Unionist candidate; he had previously held a majority
of 863. Emmeline put a brave face on her disappointment. She told the Daily
Heraldthat although they would have been pleased to see Mr. Lansbury elected,
the fact that over 3,000 men voted directly for women’s suffrage was ‘very grati-
fying, and it was perfectly certain that Mr. Lansbury would have been returned
by a large majority if it had not been for the action of the Liberal Party, and the
unsympathetic spirit of the organised Labour Party’.^24
The election defeat illustrated again to Emmeline the deep prejudices against
women’s suffrage within men’s political parties and also the futility of using legal
and constitutional means to win the vote. From now on, distrust of the Labour
Party became more pronounced within the WSPU leadership, a situation that
had already caused some socialist militants, such as Mona Taylor in the
Newcastle WSPU, to resign her membership.^25 Sylvia Pankhurst too found
herself in an uneasy situation since she was now told by WSPU headquarters to
close down the East End work. However, she persuaded her mother to change
her mind, pointing out that she could organise a deputation of East End
working women, preferably to seek an audience with Lloyd George.^26
HONORARY TREASURER OF THE WSPU AND AGITATOR