had paid off as many antis recanted their views. The war effort now offered a
‘face-saving reason for owning up to the inevitable’.^111 True to her principle
that the WSPU would suspend campaigning for women’s suffrage until the war
was over, Emmeline refused to join the joint committee of all the suffrage soci-
eties, established early in 1917 as a means of presenting a united front on the
women’s suffrage issue to the Speaker’s Conference, due to report at the end of
January. On the advice of this Conference, a formula was adopted to require a
higher age qualification for women’s right to vote than that which applied to
men. Thus the report included unanimous recommendations to abolish the
property qualification for men, to require only six months’ residence in property
valued at £10 a year, to enfranchise soldiers and sailors and to confer – by a
majority rather than unanimous decision – ‘some measure of woman’s suffrage’,
with an age bar of thirty or thirty-five and an implicit property qualification
that would enfranchise about 7 million women.^112 Although the restrictions on
women’s voting caused a lot of dissent amongst suffragists, Emmeline distanced
herself from the ensuing discussion so that the WSPU was not initially included
in the list of women’s suffrage societies which the NUWSS had called upon to
form a deputation to Lloyd George on 29 March 1917.
Earlier that month, Emmeline had had other matters on her mind, namely a
damage limitation exercise in regard to the WSPU. She was a witness in the
trial of Alice Wheeldon and her daughter, Hettie, socialist feminists and one
time Union members, who were accused of plotting to assassinate Lloyd George
and Arthur Henderson, a member of the Cabinet. Emmeline was anxious that
bad publicity about suffragettes could wreck the recent work she had under-
taken to promote the WSPU as a patriotic and responsible organisation, whose
members could be reintegrated into society. She stood in the dock at the trial,
denying a statement made to the witness for the prosecution that the WSPU
had spent £500 trying to poison Lloyd George. ‘The Women’s Social and
Political Union regards the Prime Minister’s life as of the greatest value in the
present grave crisis’, she pleaded, ‘and its members would if necessary to do so,
take great risks themselves to protect it from danger.’^113 Although Alice
Wheeldon, but not Hettie, was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years’ penal
servitude, she was later released, on Lloyd George’s orders, after serving nine
months.
Once the trial was out of the way, Emmeline decided to write to Millicent
Garrett Fawcett, asking if they could meet to discuss the women’s suffrage issue.
‘Wise & limited action at this moment when change is in the air at home &
abroad may win our cause’, she stated.^114 Shortly before the 29 March, the day
scheduled for the deputation to the Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street rang up
Ray Strachey, one of the honorary secretaries of the NUWSS, to say that Lloyd
George would receive together all the societies wanting to see him, ‘& also Mrs.
Pankhurst’. Ray confided to her mother, ‘[O]ne and all objected to Mrs
Pankhurst, and I had to go and see her and make an arrangement by which she
came in, but was not part of, the deputation.’^115 On the day, Emmeline cast all
WAR WORK AND A SECOND FAMILY