Lawrence. Shortly afterwards, the Daily Herald reported that Sylvia’s
ELFS/WSPU was to form a People’s Army, of women and men, to protect its
members from police assault; it also noted that ‘every day the industrial rebels
and the suffrage rebels march nearer together’.^25 Christabel was furious, and
wrote to Sylvia saying that she would reply publicly to the statements. ‘I shall
repudiate any connection between the Herald League & the WSPU & in this
& every possible way shall make it clear that we are absolutely independent of
this as of all men’s parties & movements.’^26 That Sylvia was speaking on a
socialist platform with Fred Pethick Lawrence who had been ousted from the
WSPU, must have been galling to Christabel and seen as a dangerous challenge
to the leadership of the WSPU that she and her mother now held.
Christabel, in daily contact with her mother, decided that Sylvia had to be
disciplined; her public clarification of the matter appeared in the 14 November
1913 issue of The Suffragette. There is no truth whatever, she claimed, in the
suggestion that the WSPU was marching nearer to any other movement. ‘Miss
Sylvia Pankhurst’, whose campaign in the East End of London is run on ‘inde-
pendent lines’ was present in her ‘personal capacity’ and not ‘officially
representing the W.S.P.U.’.^27
Sylvia, for her part, had come to the conclusion that she could no longer
keep silent, as in the past, about her differences of view with her sister.^28 And it
was a convenient time now to force the issue. She knew that membership of the
WSPU was falling and that there was a lot of criticism from militants about the
leadership, especially of Christabel who had become, in Morley and Stanley’s
terms ‘a removed and almost mythical “leader over the water”, seen by only the
very few (or, like Mary Leigh, the very pushy)’.^29 And their mother was in the
USA. If Sylvia could force the issue now, she could oust Christabel from the
leadership. And Emmeline, who had never repudiated socialism but was
fervently critical of the ILP and Labour Party, might be persuaded to toe the
line. Sylvia tried to rally support amongst sympathetic WSPU supporters by
sending a letter to WSPU branches explaining that she had attended the Albert
Hall meeting simply to put the question of votes for women before a large audi-
ence of 10,000 people. There was a time, she continued, when the WSPU held
far more meetings than any other society, but that was no longer the case,
despite the importance of holding such meetings for the recruitment of new
militants. The HeraldLeague as well as the ILP would shortly be holding meet-
ings at which, she believed, ‘Miss Annie Kenney, Miss Richardson and others,
will, I am sure, be glad to help so far as they can in speaking ... just as I am
ready to do whenever possible.’^30 Sylvia also wrote a letter to Christabel, along
similar lines, for publication in The Suffragette.^31
The public row between the Pankhurst sisters caused many a gasp of horror
from Union sympathisers and members alike, who feared another split.
Nevinson raised the matter at a Men’s Political Union meeting and, not unex-
pectedly, his colleagues argued that ‘the trouble was deeper, arising fr.
Christabel’s suspicion & hatred of all men. I ... offered to see Mrs. Pankhurst
OUSTING OF SYLVIA AND A FRESH START FOR ADELA