making house-to-house calls amongst the agricultural workers and their wives,
as well as organising large public meetings and talks in the more intimate
atmosphere of the pub. Emmeline was told too that there were several commu-
nist or proletarian Sunday schools in the area, where religion was described as
superstition, and materialism and class hatred taught to the children who
attended. Such information fired her to work even harder to beat the commu-
nist menace and so she was delighted when, soon after her return, she was
asked to propose the vote of thanks to Stanley Baldwin at a large Conservative
Party meeting in the Albert Hall.
Sylvia, on the other hand, was advocating the communism her mother so
detested while Christabel undertook, that autumn, a campaign tour in Britain
for the Advent Testimony. The ideological separation between the Pankhurst
women, and the various causes each independently supported, did not go unno-
ticed in the press, even in North America. ‘Trio of Pankhursts Far Apart in
Ideals’ ran a headline in the Toronto Daily Star. ‘Mrs. Pankhurst Against
Communism, Sylvia Teaches It, Christabel Very Religious’.^18 Once a declared
atheist, Emmeline had mellowed in her opinions about religion; her experiences
in Russia and her hatred of the communist attack on Christian civilisation had
made her more tolerant of and receptive towards Christianity, especially since
Christabel’s religious conversion. Although Emmeline appears not to have
expressed herself publicly on Christabel’s religious crusade, she continued to
take great pride in her eldest daughter’s achievements. On 4 November she
wrote to Esther, ‘The last meetings of Christabel’s present tour were in the
Queen’s Hall on Tuesday last. I feared she would be worn out especially as she
had just come from Dublin (a tiresome journey) but she was wonderful at both
meetings. I wish you had been there to hear her.’^19 In early December, shortly
after she had published an article in the Evening Newstitled ‘Women Can
Defeat The “Reds”!’, Emmeline wrote to Esther telling her that she expected to
be formally adopted, early in the New Year, as the Conservative candidate for
the working-class constituency of Whitechapel and St. George’s, in London’s
East End. Since this was a poor, socialist constituency that she had no hope of
winning in the 1929 general election, Martin Pugh claims that Emmeline’s will-
ingness to accept nomination was made ‘in order to spite Sylvia’ while for Brian
Harrison, Emmeline’s concern for the British Empire, her distaste for socialism,
and her support for Baldwin had ‘displaced feminism from her list of priori-
ties’.^20 What both fail to acknowledge is that Emmeline wanted a working-class
constituency since she believed it was the working classes, especially the
women, who were being most exploited by communism. Furthermore, since she
was poor herself, she had to rely on the financial backing and patronage of
others. As she explained to Esther, ‘A lady who wants me to stand there has
subscribed enough money for a good start and it has been put into an election
fund. Miss [Barbara] Wylie is going to take charge of speakers & speaking I am
glad to say and another good suffrage friend is taking charge of the social side of
the work.’ Emmeline confided that at present nothing would appear publicly for
CONSERVATIVE PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATE