increasingly serious early in 1926, Flora Drummond, the Guild’s Controller-in-
Chief, called on wives to go on strike and to join a women’s demonstration
against strikes and lockouts to be held on 17 April through the streets of
London to the Royal Albert Hall. Emmeline watched the enormous demonstra-
tion and then sat, at Esther Greg’s invitation, in her box at the Albert Hall.^7
During the following weeks, the situation worsened when coal miners, who
refused to accept wage cuts or to work longer hours for the same pay, were
locked out. The government drew up plans for a state of emergency and a
General Strike was declared on 1 May, some 2,500,000 workers eventually
being involved. Although the strike only lasted just over a week, its presence
and the events surrounding it made Emmeline declare her political allegiance.
Emmeline had never been a member of the WGE and it was not to this
organisation but to the Women’s Auxiliary Service, headed by Commandant
Mary Allen, another ex-suffragette, that she turned. Mary Allen, best remem-
bered for her pioneering work with women police during the war, refused to
disband her Women Police once the war was over; instead, she formed her own
unofficial Women’s Police Reserve, later named the Women’s Auxiliary
Service. On 1 May, the day the General Strike was declared, Emmeline phoned
Mary Allen, putting her services at the Commandant’s disposal. During the
following days, Emmeline went into slum areas organising meetings and
concerts for women, with the aim of keeping them off the streets and away from
agitators’ meetings.^8 On 3 May 1926, she also offered her services to Nancy
Astor. ‘How I wish that I could do what I did at the outbreak of war’, she wrote,
‘that is set a whole organization to work. ... Do use me if you can.’^9
Although the strike soon ended, Emmeline’s admiration for the way Stanley
Baldwin, the Conservative Prime Minister, had handled the crisis, undoubtedly
influenced her decision to stand as a Conservative parliamentary candidate. She
thought long and hard before making such a commitment. She had always
argued against party political allegiance but now the ‘constructive use’ of the
women’s vote was her main concern. ‘To strengthen the British Empire and
draw closer together its lands and people’ was a cause dear to her heart.^10 She
needed employment, and her oratorial skills could be effectively utilised in such
important work. Emmeline had no inclination to stand as a parliamentary
candidate for either the Liberal or Labour parties; her bitter conflict with the
Liberals during her suffrage years made such an alliance impossible while the
Labour Party, with its pacifist and anti-Empire leanings, its concern with state
socialism, and its allegiance to the male-oriented trade unions, had marginalised
women’s issues. She had nowhere else to turn for the hope of a parliamentary
career where she might bring women’s issues to the forefront than to the
Conservatives.
In early June, newspapers in England, the USA and Canada were humming
with the news of the ‘conversion’ of the former ILP member and militant
suffrage leader to the Conservative Party. The North American press, always
fascinated by the petite, dignified Englishwoman who had once been an
CONSERVATIVE PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATE