After Emmeline’s death, many tributes were paid to her; although she had spent
her life campaigning for a number of varied social causes, it was for her leader-
ship of the militant wing of the women’s suffrage movement that she was
remembered, at home and abroad. ‘Emmeline Goulden Pankhurst’, proclaimed
the New York Herald Tribune, was ‘the most remarkable political and social
agitator of the early part of the twentieth century and the supreme protagonist
of the campaign for the electoral enfranchisement of women’, a view echoed in
the British press, even by the left-wing Daily Herald.^1 Mrs. Pankhurst belonged
to that class of famous women like Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale
claimed the Evening Standard; she was the very edge ‘of that weapon of will-
power by which British women freed themselves from being classed with
children and idiots in the matter of exercising the franchise’.^2 Even Emmeline
Pethick Lawrence, now president of the WFL, spoke generously of the ‘gentle’
autocrat who had ended her connection with the WSPU. ‘Not only all women
in Britain, but all women in the world, owe a deep debt of gratitude and honour
to Mrs. Pankhurst. Without her genius and courage they could not have
attained for many, many years the position they hold to-day.’^3 But perhaps it
was Beatrice Harraden, writer and ex-WSPU member, who encapsulated most
of what Emmeline Pankhurst had represented. ‘She was a born leader’, Beatrice
wrote, ‘one had only to hear her even for a short time to be caught by her
eloquence, and to be convinced that she had greatness of spirit – and vision.’
She continued:
Christabel Pankhurst may have supplied the youthful vivacity of the
new suffrage organization [WSPU], but it was her mother’s character
which formed its bedrock. It was at Mrs. Pankhurst’s bidding that
women of all conditions of life, young and old alike, sprang up to join
in the militant campaign for votes for women, justice for women, equal
chances for women, the open road, a free pass for women – demands so
long and patiently toiled for through long years of discouragement, by
the older constitutional societies. Her selfishness, her courage, and her
endurance will remain implanted in our memories as an abiding source