Hardie was the only NAC member strongly in support of women’s suffrage,
Philip Snowden and Bruce Glasier being actively hostile.^3 Emmeline had always
had a close friendship with the Glasiers, writing warm congratulations to
Katherine in June 1903 on the birth of a son:
I am sure you are delighted to have a dear little boy & we are all
thankful you have had a good time. Take care of yourself, & don’t try
to be too clever about getting up. It is better to be over careful at first.
You know I am an old hand & can give good advice when you are
about again.^4That friendship now became strained as Emmeline became acutely aware of
Bruce Glasier’s opposition to women’s enfranchisement.
Like other ILP speakers, Glasier often came to stay at Nelson Street where
Christabel fiercely challenged his view that women did not need the vote since
they could be represented by men; in particular, she resented his insistence that
there was no distinction of sex, only of class. She expounded her views further
in the public forum of the I.L.P. News. ‘Why are women expected to have such
confidence in the men of the Labour party? Working-men are as unjust to
women as are those of other classes.’^5 Christabel, among the third generation of
women campaigning for the vote, had made up her mind that the demand for
women’s suffrage must be hastened, that it was undignified to keep on pleading
helplessly. In particular, she regarded the tactics of the main suffrage society, the
NUWSS, which had been formed in 1897 from an amalgamation of smaller
groupings, as ineffective. Although the NUWSS claimed to be non-party, it
considered the granting of the parliamentary vote to women as a ‘natural exten-
sion’ of Liberal principles and believed that it would be a Liberal government
that would enfranchise women.^6 Led by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the
NUWSS had engaged in peaceful, constitutional campaigning, including an
annual lobbying of parliament, but no women’s franchise bill had been intro-
duced for some six years; furthermore, it admitted men to its ranks.^7 ‘It is
unendurable’, Christabel declared to her mother, ‘to think of another genera-
tion of women wasting their lives begging for the vote. We must not lose any
more time. We must act.’^8 Pondering on the question of how to breathe new life
into the movement, Emmeline suggested that progress might be made if the
older suffrage workers worked together with the younger, unwearied suffragists.
‘After that’, she recollected, ‘I and my daughters together sought a way to bring
about that union of young and old which would find new methods, blaze new
trails.’^9
Sylvia had been working for some months on the mural decorations for
Pankhurst Hall, built in memory of her father. Shortly before it was due to be
officially opened, on 2 October, she was astonished to hear that the branch of
the ILP that used the hall would not allow women to join. Deep indignation
was felt in the Pankhurst family, especially by Emmeline, about the discrimina-
FOUNDATION AND EARLY YEARS OF THE WSPU