Englishmen. The visit of Rochefort’s daughter, her old schoolfriend, Noémie,
with her three children, brought back happy memories of times in Paris.^23
Emmeline’s interest in women’s suffrage was not lost in all this activity but
still a key concern. The tensions in the women’s suffrage movement, of which
she was only too aware, took another direction that autumn of 1888 when the
Central Committee of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, which repre-
sented all the suffrage societies, called for a special general meeting to be held
on 12 December, for the purpose of revising its rules so that the Executive could
approve the affiliation of any women’s organisation which had aims other than
women’s suffrage. The move was opposed by, amongst others, Lydia Becker, its
secretary, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Lilias Ashworth Hallett who feared
that such a change would bring the affiliation of party political women’s organi-
sations and thus destroy the non-party character of the National Society which,
it was believed, had enabled it to gain a majority of members of the House of
Commons in favour of women’s suffrage; the presence of such organisations too
might even advance the campaigns of male parliamentary candidates who
opposed the women’s cause or would vote against it.^24 On the morning of the
12 December Emmeline, whose membership was still with the Manchester
Society, paid a five shilling membership subscription to the National Society so
that she could attend the meeting scheduled for noon. Florence Balgarnie, in a
hastily written note to her, expressed the views of the Society’s Executive when
she pointed out that although Emmeline was technically qualified to attend, it
was hoped that women who had only recently joined would not press their enti-
tlement.^25 Emmeline, a determined woman, presumably insisted on her right to
be present since she is listed amongst the delegates at the stormy meeting which
raged for three and a half hours. When the majority voted for the change, the
dissident minority, headed by Lydia Becker and Millicent Garrett Fawcett
walked out of the hall, thus bringing about a damaging split in the main
women’s suffrage society.^26 Although Sylvia Pankhurst claims that her mother
intended to vote against the proposed revision of the rules, it is fair to assume
that the opposite is true since Emmeline became a subscriber to the ‘new rules’
organisation, now called the Central National Society for Women’s Suffrage,
based in Parliament Street, and usually referred to as the ‘Parliament Street
Society’.^27 Those who had opposed the change established an alternative ‘old
rules’ organisation retaining the ‘old’ name of the Central Committee of the
National Society for Women’s Suffrage, based at Great College Street,
commonly known as the ‘Great College Street Society’. Once again it would
appear that Emmeline had disagreed with the views of Lydia Becker who now
branded the members of the Parliament Street Society as the ‘left-wing’ and
‘extreme left’ sections of the women’s suffrage movement.^28 The exclusion of
married women from the demand for the vote had been an issue dividing the
two groups. However, although the Parliament Street Society broadly supported
the married women’s claim, it was not united on the matter, as Emmeline and
Richard soon found out. At its first annual meeting, the ‘ultra-Radicals’, as
POLITICAL HOSTESS