although Conservative Headquarters approved the local people had not
formally invited her yet.^21
Rejoicing in the good news, Esther invited Emmeline and Christabel to
come for dinner on Christmas Day. ‘I shall love to dine with you’, replied a
chirpy Emmeline, ‘How kind of you to ask me.’ Christabel was now leading her
own independent life and her mother explained that she thought it highly
likely that her eldest daughter would spend Christmas in Bournemouth, which
she did. On New Year’s Day, 1927, Emmeline wrote a note of thanks to Esther.
‘I did so enjoy your Christmas Day party and have been telling my young rela-
tions how without any children or young people we wore our paper caps and
pulled our crackers.’^22
When Sylvia heard the news that her mother was standing as a Conservative
candidate, she wept. Although she was passionately loyal to her father, and his
socialist beliefs, she still wanted her mother’s love and acceptance, despite their
political differences. Emmeline’s years in Canada had come as a relief to Sylvia
since her mother was no longer present to embarrass her with her attacks on
Bolshevism. That Christabel, whom she persisted in seeing as the ‘prime family
traitor and the corrupter of her mother’s better instincts’, had been in North
America too, had dulled the pain that Emmeline preferred her eldest
daughter.^23 But now that both were back in England, Sylvia had to face the
humiliation her mother was inflicting on her. She wrote to the socialist journal
Forwarddenouncing her mother:
Permit me, through your columns, to express my profound grief that
my mother should have deserted the cause of progress. ... For my part I
rejoice in having enlisted for life in the socialist movement, in which
the work of Owen, Marx, Kropotkin, William Morris and Keir Hardie,
and such pioneering efforts as those of my father, Richard Marsden
Pankhurst, both before and during the rise of the movement in this
country, are an enduring memoir. It is naturally most painful to me to
write this, but I feel it incumbent upon me, in view of this defection, to
reaffirm my faith in the cause of social and international fraternity, and
to utter a word of sorrow that one who in the past has rendered such
service should now, with that sad pessimism which sometimes comes
with advancing years, and may result from too strenuous effort, join the
reaction ...^24Since the letter was summarised in most of the daily newspapers, there was no
escape for Emmeline from what was now a very public family feud.
Emmeline responded to the situation by immersing herself in her election
campaign, posing for the official election photograph. She wrote to friends, such
as Margaret Bates in Toronto, with all her news. ‘Tell Dr. Bates that I hope I
may be able to do something for S.H. [Social Hygiene} if I am elected.’
Everyone in the Conservative Party was very friendly, she stated, and old
CONSERVATIVE PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATE