clouds!’^27 But going to church did nothing to still the controversy. Even more
disastrous for Richard, a fervent advocate of the Irish cause, was the fact that
Charles Parnell instructed his followers to vote against all government candi-
dates, irrespective of whether they supported Home Rule or not; Parnell
believed that such a strategy would destroy the majority enjoyed by Gladstone
and force him to grant Home Rule which he carefully had not excluded from
his election manifesto. On polling day the Colonel received 3,327 votes,
Richard 2,800. Crushed by a second defeat, Emmeline was particularly upset
by the way her husband had been treated by the leader of the Irish
Nationalists, but Richard defended Parnell’s policy pointing out that tactics of
constant obstruction could eventually wring from a hostile Liberal government
surrender on the Home Rule issue. ‘That was a valuable political lesson’,
Emmeline recalled, ‘one that years later I was destined to put into practice.’^28
Richard decided to take a court action against the authors of the libel, the
case being tried in May 1886 by Justice Grantham who gave a verdict for the
defendant. Since Grantham himself had stood as a Conservative candidate in
the November general election and only recently been appointed to the Bench
by the short-lived Conservative government, his ruling was called into ques-
tion, especially by influential radical newspapers, such as the Pall Mall Gazette,
edited by William Stead, with whom Richard corresponded.^29 Emmeline was
enraged. Fiercely protective of her husband, she revealed her courage by writing
a forthright and contemptuous letter to Justice Grantham:
May 14th, 1886My Lord, – Your judgement of Wednesday, and your summing up to the
jury to-day, are the concluding acts of a conspiracy to crush the public
life of an honourable public man. It is to be regretted that there should
be found on the English Bench a judge who will lend his aid to a
disreputable section of the Tory Party in doing their dirty work; but for
what other reason were you ever placed where you are?
I have, my Lord, the honour to be
Your obedient servant,
Emmeline Pankhurst.^30‘Let him send me to prison! I want to go to prison for contempt of Court!’ she
protested to those who would listen.^31 But the judge did not respond to the
accusations and did not reply to her letter.
Richard decided to appeal against the rulings of Justice Grantham, and in
March 1887 a jury found in his favour, awarding him £60 damages of which he
agreed to accept just forty shillings. Financial burdens from the cost of the elec-
tion and the libel actions were now pressing. But Richard would not abandon
his radical politics in order to make a comfortable living from his legal practice,
and neither did Emmeline want him to do so. As close partners in the causes
MARRIAGE AND ENTRY INTO POLITICAL LIFE