and Cheshire Union of the Women’s Liberal Association.^22 Emmeline had
never forgiven the Liberal statesman William Ewart Gladstone for his opposi-
tion to women’s suffrage and was only too glad to sever her links with the
Liberal Party which she saw as a men’s party that used the talents of Liberal
women for its own ends. The members of the Women’s Liberal Federation, she
later recollected, had been given the promise that if they worked with Liberal
men in party politics, they would soon earn the right to vote. ‘The avidity with
which the women swallowed this promise, left off working for themselves, and
threw themselves into the men’s work was amazing.’^23
Richard, who had also left the Liberal Party, now followed Emmeline’s lead
in joining the ILP.^24 He had been hesitant to do so, worried about the effect it
might have upon his legal practice.^25 When he formally announced in the
press, in September 1894, that he had decided to join the South Manchester
Branch of the ILP,^26 his fears were confirmed. Clients began to take their work
elsewhere and Manchester City Council no longer required his services. The
forthright Emmeline told an interviewer of a local socialist newspaper that since
they had both allied themselves to the ILP they no longer received invitations
to functions at the town hall.^27 Richard still gave unsparingly free legal advice
to trade unions and other socialist groupings, but clearly this did not bring in
any income. Furthermore, his health was now giving Emmeline increasing cause
for concern. The previous year he had suffered digestive troubles and attained
some relief by attending Smedley Hydro in Southport, a hydropathic establish-
ment where water was applied externally to the body of the patient, but he had
not been cured and the stomach pains had increased in intensity. A stickler for
hard work and duty, Richard none the less continued his exhausting schedule of
work and political life, often speaking at open-air ILP meetings with his pretty
wife from whom he hid the extent of his suffering.^28
Emmeline and Richard’s home became a place well known for socialist
sympathies and ILP speakers who came to Manchester, such as Keir Hardie,
Bruce Glasier and his wife, Katherine St. John Conway, invariably stayed at 4
Buckingham Crescent. Although Christabel, Sylvia and Adela now attended
Manchester High School for Girls where, as at their Southport school, their
father insisted that they were excused from lessons in scripture, Emmeline set
little store by the teaching. As she later told one interviewer, ‘[M]y daughters
never went to school until they were about twelve, and then I’m not sure it did
them much good. Of course they had some elementary teaching, but I want to
develop their individuality above all things.’^29 Developing individuality in her
daughters meant, above all else, encouraging them to participate in political life
and to read, think and talk about big social issues. The children regularly read
the socialist literature that came to the house and accompanied their parents
when they spoke on the socialist cause in the deprived working-class districts of
Manchester.^30 Emmeline’s hopes for the future were now placed in the fledgling
ILP and so in the autumn of 1894 she offered to stand for election as an ILP
candidate for the Chorlton Board of Guardians in the poor district of
SOCIALIST AND PUBLIC REPRESENTATIVE