believed that industrial unrest was the work of unseen forces, driven by the
Germans, the Soviet Bolsheviks and pacifists rather than evidence of class
conflict between workers and employers. She warned that all the political work
of the WSPU in advancing the cause of women was useless, unless there was
industrial peace – ‘if we do not calm industrial unrest and restore harmony
between the workers and those who direct them, if we do not keep up the
supply of munitions at the front, all the other work might just as well never
have been done’.^122 Such a message was an important part of the ‘industrial
campaign’, as it was called, that the WSPU had recently launched, with
government approval and financial backing of £15,000 from leading capital-
ists.^123
Emmeline was now speaking regularly in old London haunts, such as
Trafalgar Square or near the Reformer’s Tree, in Hyde Park, and, above all else,
enjoying living in a home of her own with her ‘new’ family. Yet, as she wrote on
3 May 1917 to Ethel Smyth, she was living under considerable financial strain:
I have got to love this home of mine; pray heaven I shall be able to
keep it. Sometimes I feel appalled at the responsibility I have under-
taken in adopting these four young things at my time of life, especially
as I don’t find people very keen to share the burden with me! However
who knows? I’ll go on as long as I can, in the faith that help will come
when it’s needed. The cost of living increases from week to week. How
the poor live God only knows.^124However, such worries were soon overshadowed by reports about the war in
Russia.
WAR WORK AND A SECOND FAMILY