free to help organise protest meetings after the event and to write letters to the
press.^58 On the evening of the 13th, Christabel bade her anxious mother
farewell with the words, ‘We shall sleep in prison tonight.’ Tucked inside her
blouse was a small calico banner that Emmeline had made on which was
printed, in black polish, ‘Votes for women’. After Sir Edward Grey had
concluded his speech, in which there was no mention of women’s suffrage,
Annie asked the question, phrased in advance by Christabel, ‘Will the Liberal
government give women the vote?’ As expected, no answer was given, and
Christabel, unfurling the banner, repeated the question, setting the meeting
‘aflame with excitement’.^59 Once the angry cries from the audience had died
down, the Chief Constable of Manchester invited the two women to put their
question in writing so that it could be handed to the speaker. Christabel and
Annie waited again patiently, and found that Sir Edward Grey responded to the
vote of thanks, without an answer to their question. Immediately, Annie stood
on her chair and asked the question again. The audience howled and shouted as
the two women were roughly handled and dragged outside by stewards where
Christabel deliberately committed the technical offence of spitting at a
policeman in order to be arrested. In the police court the following day,
Emmeline heard Christabel and Annie refusing to pay the fines imposed on
them and choosing instead one week and three days imprisonment, respectively.
She hurried to the room into which the two women were ushered and, with
motherly concern, pleaded with Christabel, ‘You have done everything you
could be expected to do in this matter, I think you should let me pay your fines
and take you home.’ But her daughter was resolute. ‘Mother, if you pay my fine I
will never go home.’^60 Emmeline did not disagree. Believing that her first-born
had the finest political instinct, she ‘identified herself ’ with the new tactics
‘promptly and unreservedly’ claimed Evelyn Sharp, evidence not only of her
‘perception’ but also of her ‘perfect understanding’ with Christabel. Emmeline
Pankhurst had many qualities that made her an exceptional woman, continued
Sharp, ‘and not the least of them was the vision that primarily enabled her to
detect where the younger woman excelled in political acumen and freshness of
outlook’.^61 The following evening, Emmeline addressed a crowd of nearly a
thousand men and women, who, despite a cold, drizzling rain, assembled in
Stevenson Square to protest against the harsh treatment meted out to the two
WSPU members. Although she knew she was risking her livelihood, Emmeline
stood firmly behind the militant action, saying how she was ‘proud to be the
mother of one of the two noble girls who had gone to prison in the endeavour
to advocate the enfranchisement of women’.^62 When Annie was released on 16
October, Emmeline greeted her at the prison gates with the words that she now
regarded her as one of her family. ‘Annie, as long as I have a home you must
look upon it as yours. You will never have to return to factory life.’^63
Emmeline attended the large welcome for the ex-prisoners, held at the Free
Trade Hall on 20 October, the day of Christabel’s release. Organised by Teresa
Billington and Sam Robinson, chair of the Manchester Central Branch of the
FOUNDATION AND EARLY YEARS OF THE WSPU