heroically sacrificing themselves for the nation.^99 She therefore authorised
Commander Bellairs, an MP, to say in the House of Commons that she, on
behalf of the WSPU, repudiated the Prime Minister’s statement and would not
allow the women’s case to be used ‘to prevent soldiers and sailors from being
given the vote’.^100 The government now decided to refer discussion of franchise
reform to an all-party committee of thirty-two MPs and peers, chaired by the
Speaker of the Commons, which first met in October 1916 and reported early
in the New Year. Emmeline, the practical politician, made a strategic decision;
she held aloof from these proceedings since she believed that ‘a certain detach-
ment’ on her part would give ‘more effect’ to any threat of ‘potential, post-war
militancy’.^101 Instead of engaging in deliberations about the terms on which
women should be given the franchise, she busied herself by continuing her
campaigning and voicing her concerns about Asquith’s leadership.
On Sunday 10 September Emmeline spoke to large crowds gathered in Hyde
Park at a meeting to demand the recall to England of the fiercely pro-British
Labour Prime Minister of Australia, Billy Hughes; Hughes was against a
compromise peace and argued that victory could be hastened if more men were
conscripted and sent to the war front. Emmeline and Christabel wanted Hughes
to join the Asquith government, not to prop it up indefinitely, but to bring
some ‘common sense, foresight, sanity, and determination where those qualities
are conspicuously absent’.^102 That autumn, when Hughes announced a refer-
endum on conscription in Australia, Adela vigorously opposed such a move. A
sad and angry Emmeline, campaigning throughout England, asking people to
sign memorials to support the recall of Hughes as well as for contributions to a
victory fund, had no choice but to condemn the views of her daughter. ‘I am
ashamed of Adela and repudiate her’, she cabled the Australian prime minister.
‘Wish you all success. Make any use of this.’^103 Adela, reflecting on these events
some seventeen years later, cast a light on the disagreement:
Poor mother was terribly angry at my anti-conscription views and atti-
tudes. I know now that her attitude was ridiculous – but it was the
family attitude – Cause First and human relations nowhere. Her new
Cause meant as much to her as the old one and she was as impatient of
opposition. But after all was that not inevitable? I was young; she was
old and our points of view could not be the same. Tolerance was
certainly not to be learned in the school in which she had been
trained. If she had been tolerant and broadminded, she could not have
been the leader of the Suffragettes. She had nearly forgotten me as a
daughter – we had never lived together for so many years – and I must
confess, I had largely forgotten her as a mother and regarded her as a
Leader and a public woman.^104Although Emmeline spoke on 1 October at the Queen’s Hall, in support of
the demand for votes for sailors and soldiers,^105 she was also particularly
WAR WORK AND A SECOND FAMILY