Even though suffrage militancy had been suspended with the outbreak of war,
Emmeline knew that it was inevitable that, sometime in the future, women
would be granted their citizenship rights. As she wrote the closing paragraphs of
her autobiography later that summer of 1914, she forecast, ‘Our battles are prac-
tically over. ... No future Government will repeat the mistakes and the
brutality of the Asquith Ministry.’^1 Although the 14 August issue of The
Suffragettehad been printed, it was not published, and publication ceased until
eight months later.
Emmeline was free to return to England without fear of arrest and did so in
early September, together with Christabel who had been in exile for two and a
half years. As Caine notes, the crisis posed by the First World War brought into
prominence questions about the relationship of feminism to nationalism and
militarism on the one hand, and to internationalism and pacifism on the other.^2
Such issues were now confronted by the WSPU leadership. Emmeline and
Christabel were firmly of the view that, as Christabel put it, they could not be
‘pacifists at any price’; their country was at war, and they had to support the
national cause.^3 Thus, as Tickner observes, Emmeline guided the WSPU to
realign alongside the men of the nation who, at a time when military conscrip-
tion was voluntary not compulsory, had an opportunity to ‘redeem’ themselves
by offering to engage in battle; militant rhetoric and the image of the ‘just
cause’ remained, but the object of attack shifted to that of German hostility.^4
Just how many WSPU members welcomed the shift in policy is difficult to
ascertain. Kitty Marion was of the view that that there was ‘much dissatisfaction
and withdrawal’ of membership.^5
Although historians have generally portrayed Emmeline’s patriotic support
for the British government during the First World War as an abrupt about-turn
from her suffragette days,^6 they have not explored the ways in which this
support was not given uncritically or how she pressurised the government to
encourage women to undertake war work, believing that the eventual reward
would be the parliamentary vote. In short, little attention has been given to her
‘patriotic feminism’. As Joan Beaumont points out, recent feminist writers have
projected their own alignment with anti-imperialism and anti-militarism onto
nancy kaufman
(Nancy Kaufman)
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