excitement’ ran through WSPU ranks and the older suffrage societies at the
news about the bill, the first women’s suffrage bill in eight years.^39 Now meet-
ings were held and petitions organised, as new life sprung back into the
movement.^40 When Sylvia attended a London meeting organised by the
NUWSS in support of the bill, she found it all ‘very polite and very tame’, very
different to the socialist meetings in the North. Fifty MPs, all in evening dress,
sat on the platform, one by one giving their support, ‘in a few trite words’.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett, a ‘trim, prim little figure’ spoke in a clear, pleasant
tone while a number of women gave brief utterances in ‘nervous, high-pitched
voices’.^41 In the North, Emmeline, Christabel, Teresa Billington and other
WSPU members travelled around Lancashire and Cheshire, speaking in the
more rousing socialist style; they also wrote letters to the socialist press.^42 The
ILP annual conference that year was held in late April in Manchester and
Emmeline was determined to make the most of the occasion by hosting a recep-
tion for delegates, in her home. The Conference passed a resolution supporting
the bill and Emmeline, once again, was elected to the NAC.^43
On the fateful 12 May Emmeline, accompanied by Elizabeth Wolstenholme
Elmy, Isabella Ford and Dora Montefiore, was one of about 300 women who
thronged the Strangers’ Lobby and surrounding areas, waiting to hear the result.
Also amongst the crowd were constitutional suffragists and a large number from
the Women’s Co-operative Guild, brought there by Nellie Alma Martel from
Australia, who had been active in winning votes for women in New South
Wales and then stood as a candidate for the Commonwealth Parliament.^44 The
debate on the Lighting of Vehicles Bill was spun out from noon till four o’clock
by the anti-suffragists who told silly stories and foolish jokes which were greeted
with much laughter. As news of what was happening filtered through to the
Lobby, an irate but confident Emmeline hastily scribbled a note to Arthur
Balfour, the Conservative Prime Minister, informing him that unless he granted
full facilities for the bill, her Union would work against his government at the
general election. ‘The threat was comic’, opined Rebecca West many years
later; Emmeline Pankhurst was ‘a little woman in her late forties, without a
penny, without a powerful friend’.^45 And she had been an opponent of the
Conservatives for all her political life. In the House of Commons, Bamford
Slack rose at four o’clock to move the second reading of the Women’s
Enfranchisement Bill, and then Mr. Labouchere moved to reject the bill.
Keeping an eye steadfastly on the clock, he talked and talked until it was too
late for a division to be taken. ‘It was the same speech as before that he has
made so often before’, explained a scornful Emmeline later to the readers of the
Labour Leader. ‘It contained the same jokes, the same coarse references to
women, and it was received, as some women saw and heard, by the House with
laughter and cheers. ... In this wise our Bill, for which we have worked so long
and ardently, was talked out.’^46
The waiting women outside the Commons grew dismayed and then angry
when they heard the news. A number of NUWSS members withdrew. Emmeline,
FOUNDATION AND EARLY YEARS OF THE WSPU