Not everyone, however, was impressed by Emmeline’s defence of those who
engaged in arson. On 22 August, Millicent Garrett Fawcett claimed that
however honest and devoted the militants might be, they were ‘the chief obsta-
cles in the way of the success of the suffrage movement in the House of
Commons and far more formidable opponents of it than Mr. Asquith or Mr.
Harcourt’.^14 For Adela, who strongly disapproved of the new militant tactics
and, claimed Helen Fraser, was really at heart ‘a constitutional suffragist’, the
time had come to leave the organisation of which her mother was the leader.^15
Adela had participated in her last by-election campaign earlier that month,
in North West Manchester. Sylvia had been the Organiser for the WSPU
contingent and Adela, and later Helen Archdale, were among the group of
workers. Shortly after the by-election, according to her biographer, Adela
retired from the WSPU ‘as tired as a woman twice her age’, knowing that she
could no longer ‘follow blindly’ the policy of her mother and Christabel;
disliking violence, preferring socialism to feminism, ‘grasping at a life of her
own ... sticking to her convictions, wayward yet undefeated, Adela Pankhurst
left the suffragette battlefield’.^16 Emmeline regarded her youngest daughter’s
departure from the WSPU as not only inevitable but also necessary, for Adela’s
health and happiness.
During her brief sojourn in London that summer, Emmeline had found
herself in control at WSPU headquarters for the first time, no longer the
‘outsider’ visiting from the provinces. And she liked it. The Pethick Lawrences
had not been there since they had extended their holiday by visiting relatives in
Canada. Neither Emmeline Pankhurst nor Fred Pethick Lawrence had paid the
costs levied at the conspiracy trial in May; while Emmeline had no assets for the
government to seize in default of payment, this was not the case for Fred whose
country home was occupied by bailiffs while he was still on the American conti-
nent. At a meeting in Boulogne, Emmeline talked the matter over with
Christabel, Annie Kenney and Mabel Tuke, and came to the conclusion that
the Pethick Lawrences had become a liability to the Union. The government
could strip them of their fortune thus putting pressure on the WSPU to curb
further militancy; further, sympathetic suffragettes would organise collections
on the couple’s behalf thus diverting necessary funds from the war chest while
increasing the revenue of an oppressive government. On 8 September,
Emmeline wrote what she termed ‘a business letter’ to ‘Mrs. Lawrence’ regarding
‘the situation as it seems to us to affect you and Mr. Lawrence, and your position
in the Union as treasurer’. Emmeline explained:
It is quite evident that the authorities and also the Insurance
Companies and property owners mean to take full advantage of the
fact that they can attack Mr. Lawrence with profit and through Mr.
Lawrence weaken the movement. So long as Mr. Lawrence can be
connected with militant acts involving damage to property, they will
make him pay. Nothing but the cessation of militancy (which of courseBREAK WITH THE PETHICK LAWRENCES