a demand for which none of the pre-war suffragists had dared to campaign.
Although some of her friends urged Emmeline to stand, she had no wish to do
so; she wanted that honour for Christabel. At a Women’s Party meeting on 19
November, Emmeline proudly introduced her eldest daughter as the Women’s
Party candidate. ‘I am her most ardent disciple’, she announced. ‘[S]he was the
strategist who drew up the plan of campaign which had the result of taking the
question of the citizenship of women out of the region of fads into practical
politics in this country.’^69 Lloyd George, as leader of the Coalition government.
had decided to issue ‘coupons’ of approval to all Coalition candidates and the
determined Emmeline demanded this recognition for her daughter. Had not she
and Christabel supported him through the dreadful war years? When Christabel
contacted him about her possible candidacy in the Westbury Division of
Wiltshire, Lloyd George responded positively. Immediately he wrote to Bonar
Law, the Unionist leader and one of his Coalition allies (the Labour Party had
left the Coalition before the election and was campaigning on its own behalf),
pointing out that he was not sure whether they had any women candidates, but
thought it ‘highly desirable’ that there should be some. The Women’s Party, he
continued, ‘has been extraordinarily useful, as you know, to the Government –
especially in the industrial districts where there has been trouble during the last
two very trying years. They have fought the Bolshevist and Pacifist element
with great skill, tenacity, and courage.’^70 By late November, Christabel had
switched her candidacy to the new industrial, working-class constituency of
Smethwick and soon after Lloyd George and Bonar Law prevailed upon the
already approved Coalition candidate, a Major Thompson, to stand down.^71
Her campaign was financed by donations from sympathetic women and by a
£1,000 cheque given by the British Commonwealth Union.^72
While Emmeline was relishing the thought of fighting a parliamentary elec-
tion on Christabel’s behalf, Sylvia regarded the whole election process with
disdain. She had already refused an invitation to stand as a Labour Party candi-
date for Sheffield Hallam, and developed a strong, left-wing repudiation of
parliamentary procedures. The Labour Party, she believed, would only bring ‘a
wishy-washy Reformist Government’ which, when the big issues that really
mattered came to be decided, would be swept away ‘in the wake of a capitalist
policy’.^73 Christabel, on the other hand, stood in the parliamentary election,
facing just one opponent, the Labour Party candidate, J. E. Davison, an experi-
enced trade union official and national organiser for the Ironfounders’ Society.
In her election leaflet for the Women’s Party, she was described as ‘Patriotic
Candidate for Smethwick and Supporter of the Coalition’. She pledged to work
for two main aims – a victorious peace based on material guarantees against
German aggression as well as compensation, paid by Germany, to war victims,
and for social reform. Her desire to abolish poverty and democratise prosperity
was a theme that she often emphasised when scoring points against her Labour
rival whose manifesto claimed that the Labour Party was the party for the
woman voter. It was the Women’s Party, Christabel insisted, that was ‘the true
LEADER OF THE WOMEN’S PARTY