Chapter Two

The Edwardian World

‘ The Great Unrest ’

(Popular term used to refer to the period of disturbance in 1911)

The suffragettes were a product of Edwardian Britain. This period began with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and ended with the death of her son, Edward VII, ten years later; although the term ‘Edwardian’ is often extended to include the years up to the outbreak of war in 1914. It is the wider definition that will be used here. For many of us today, this age has become a byword for stability and order, the golden heyday of imperial power brought to an abrupt end by the First World War.

In fact, this view is misleading. It was, in fact, a time of chaos and violent change, when the governments of the day faced problems that eclipse anything we see in modern Britain. These included the greatest constitutional crisis for centuries, some of the worst rioting and disorder ever seen on the British mainland, the threat of revolution and the very real possibility of the United Kingdom being engulfed by civil war. Add to this an arms race and severe unemployment, and you begin to see why reformation of the franchise to include women was not top of the agenda for the Liberal administrations which held power at that time.

It is impossible to understand the suffragettes and see where they fitted in during the early part of the twentieth century without knowing what Britain was really like at that time. Unfortunately, the mental image that we have of that era has been so shaped and modified by its representation in popular culture, that this is no easy task. Novels, films and television all too often conspire to present us with a strange and rosy picture, not only of the suffragettes, but also the world in which they operated.

A typical example of the way that Edwardian Britain is treated in films, with powerful and enduring images that seep imperceptibly into our subconscious, is that childhood classic, Mary Poppins. This well-known family film sums up both the traditional view of the suffragettes and also of the wider world of Edwardian Britain. Anyone familiar with the film will recall the prosperous and stable world in which it is set. The working-class people in it seem happy enough with their lot; just witness the humorous antics of Bert the chimney sweep and the domestic staff of the Banks household. It is set in London in 1910, but this is not a capital city in the grip of a constitutional crisis which threatens the established order and even calls into question the continued existence of the monarchy.

In the real world of 1910, the country was thought by some to be on the brink of a revolution. In the real world, 12 months after the events shown in Mary Poppins, over 12,000 troops were rushed to London and quartered in Hyde Park to protect the capital from unrest by mutinous workers, and men like Bert the chimney sweep were shot down in the streets of British cities by the army.

Mary Poppins also of course features a suffragette, who has her own song, ‘Sister Suffragette’. We understand that it is all a bit of a lark, this middle-class wife and mother involving herself in such a business. One really could not imagine Glynis Johns, as Mrs Banks, setting off a bomb or burning down the local church.

Mary Poppins is not alone in the slanted version of history from which we subliminally acquire our image of Edwardian Britain and suffragettes. Think for a moment about television programmes like Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey. There is no mention there of warships sailing up the Mersey to suppress a workers’ revolt, or anti-Jewish pograms in Wales being dealt with by bayonet charges. We are given to understand that suffragettes were flighty and naively enthusiastic women who might perhaps unfurl a banner or break a window, but nothing worse than that.

It is attitudes such as these that compel writers today, even in the face of all the evidence, to claim that the suffragettes were not ‘really’ terrorists. They couldn’t have been – just think of Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey, Elizabeth in Upstairs, Downstairs or Mrs Banks in Mary Poppins. The idea simply conflicts too radically with what people already believe they know about the suffragettes.

An example of this inability to associate the suffragettes with the concept of terrorism was given in the introduction where we encountered Andrew Marr’s assertion that the suffragettes ‘were not terrorists in any serious modern sense’. This statement appears on the very same page as the description of the partial destruction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s house by a bomb blast. It would be interesting to know what writers like this would have to say if agents of Al Qaeda blew up the house of a member of the cabinet today. Would they really claim that the bombers ‘were not terrorists in any serious modern sense’?

When the Liberal leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman was invited by the King to form a government at the end of 1905, there was considerable optimism among suffragists. Following the landslide victory of the Liberals in the election held the following year, this optimism seemed justifiable. After ten years of inaction by a Conservative government on the question of the franchise, the wind was set fair for change. The only difficulty was that the Liberals themselves had a raft of measures that they hoped to push through, some of them very controversial. Extension of the franchise was not high on this list, Campbell-Bannerman and his cabinet feeling that Old Age Pensions, National Insurance and the first steps towards a welfare state were far more important to those who had voted them in. They were probably right.

As a matter of fact, Campbell-Bannerman himself was in favour of women’s suffrage, but that did not mean that he was about to espouse the cause politically. Some of the more impatient suffragists, including those women in the WSPU who would, within a short while, become known as suffragettes, seemed to have a somewhat naïve view of the way that government works in this country. They felt that all the prime minister had to do was announce that something was to be done and it was as good as accomplished. The reality was that Henry Campbell-Bannerman did not have much chance of getting a measure of this sort on to the statute book, even had he been willing to make the attempt.

British prime ministers must, if they are to be effective leaders, win over their cabinets to whatever line they wish to take. Campbell-Bannerman’s cabinet was hopelessly divided on the matter of women’s suffrage and he did not feel inclined to embark on a fruitless confrontation with the ‘antis’ in his cabinet. There were more pressing concerns. Even if he and the cabinet were united and able to push such a change through the Commons, it would be almost impossible to persuade the Lords to swallow it. Before the passing of the 1911 Parliament Act, it was impossible to pass any legislation to which the Lords would not consent. The Liberals had seen this with great clarity during the last Liberal government before Campbell-Bannerman’s, that of Lord Rosebery in 1894 and 1895. For the whole of Lord Rosebery’s premiership, the House of Lords blocked all his domestic legislation, thereby paralysing the government.

In 1908, Campbell-Bannerman was replaced as premier by Herbert Asquith who, unlike Campbell-Bannerman, was staunchly opposed to giving women the parliamentary vote. This excited great animosity towards Asquith and his administration on the part of the WSPU, but made no practical difference to the actual situation. It remained the case that, until 1911, it was quite impossible for any British prime minister to pass a law or establish a budget without the active cooperation of the House of Lords. Had Asquith and his entire cabinet been fanatical and devoted supporters of the women’s suffrage movement, they still would not have been able to pass a law giving women the parliamentary vote.

Such subtleties were ignored by the suffragettes and their leaders. For them, the case could hardly be clearer. Those in government who did not agree with their aims or failed to do their utmost to advance the programme of the Women’s Social and Political Union were to be treated as enemies. This produced the bizarre state of affairs whereby a dedicated supporter of women’s suffrage like David Lloyd George came to be seen by the suffragettes as their bête noire. This was perfectly logical if you adopted the world view of women like Christabel Pankhurst. As early as 1903, she wrote, ‘There is nothing to choose between an enemy and a friend who does nothing’.

We must now look in some detail at the problems facing British governments in the early part of the twentieth century. This is necessary for two reasons. First, to show how precarious the state of the nation was at that time and why dealing with a series of increasingly dangerous crises was of far greater importance for the country as a whole than worrying about the extension of the franchise. Secondly, we need to appreciate how violence was being used politically, in order to understand why, as soon as the suffragettes turned to terrorism, it became absolutely impossible for the authorities to negotiate further with them or to be seen to be making the least concession to their demands. Various factions within the United Kingdom were trying to sway the government by threatening the use of force and it was vital that such behaviour was shown to achieve nothing and to wring no concessions from the government. Then, as now, surrendering to the demands of terrorists was to set a course for disaster.

In the years leading up to 1914 there was a fear that both revolution and civil war in the British Isles might be just around the corner. It was partly to head off the possibility of widespread civil unrest that the Liberal governments of 1906 and 1910 undertook programmes to tackle poverty and improve the lot of working people. How severe was the threat? During the riots which swept England in 2011, the idea was mooted that the army might need to be called in to control the streets. This was widely regarded as the nuclear option, almost a sign that Armageddon was upon us. It is interesting to note that a century earlier, rioting in England was so ferocious that the government authorised the use not only of troops and armoured cars to contain the disorder, but even brought warships into action to combat the rioting and looting.

In 1911, a year when suffragette militancy was increasing and manifested by window-smashing and hunger strikes, a series of events took place which became known as the Great Unrest, due to the number of strikes, disturbances and riots. Prices and rents were going up, but in real terms wages fell between 1910 and 1912. Many working people were furious about the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy and the ostentation of their wealth – the yachts and extravagant dinner parties, the luxurious motor cars and race horses. The mood among many workers was one of surly discontent and resentment.

The crisis came in August 1911, when hundreds of thousands of men and women were on strike. These were people who worked in vital industries, such as the railways and docks. It was proving impossible to import goods; the ships lay idly at anchor because the dockers would not unload them and the railways were at a standstill in many places. Crowds of strikers gathered in cities and towns, disregarding police orders to move on. The government’s solution was the use of troops to support the police.

Throughout July and early August, the number of strikes increased across the whole country. Almost a million workers came out on strike during 1911. Transport workers, seamen, factory hands, railway men – all were striking at different times. The city of Liverpool was one focal point for the unrest. In August, a national strike of seamen began. Other workers in Liverpool came out in sympathy and vast numbers converged on the city centre for a public meeting. A total of 250,000 men and women in the city were now on strike and when an 80,000-strong crowd began marching towards the centre of Liverpool, it looked to the authorities like an attempt to take over the city. Already, the strike committee was virtually running parts of Liverpool, deciding what goods could be moved and which vehicles were allowed on the streets. The strike committee was practically a parallel government, something along the lines of the soviets which emerged during the Russian Revolution. A magistrate read the Riot Act to the crowd, and following that the police, backed by a contingent of cavalry, tried to clear the streets.

There had been no real riot before the police and army attempted to disperse the crowds, but by the time 186 strikers had been hospitalised with various injuries and a hundred or so arrested, the mood had become exceedingly ugly. Windows were smashed, fires were started and makeshift barricades were erected across streets. Armoured cars and troops with fixed bayonets patrolled the streets. It was all a far cry from the world of Mary Poppins. Still, the crowds of strikers refused to return to their homes. Incredibly, the government response was to order two warships to sail up the Mersey and train their guns on the city. Armed sailors were landed to secure the docks. Within a few days, there were no fewer than 3,500 soldiers in Liverpool, both infantry and cavalry. The stage was set for the worst confrontation of all.

Just as in the aftermath of the 2011 riots, it was decided that sharp sentences would deter anybody in the future who might be minded to take to the streets and create trouble. Almost all those arrested in Liverpool during the first wave of rioting were convicted of public order offences and sentenced to prison terms. The vans leaving the courts and taking the convicted men to Walton Prison had been assigned an escort of 30 hussars, mounted troops who rode alongside the prison vans to discourage any escapes or attempts to free the men. Angry crowds blocked the way of the vans and bottles and stones began to be thrown at the soldiers. Some of the more daring protesters grabbed at the reins of the cavalry. An officer gave the order to open fire and five men fell to the ground wounded. Two of them, Michael Prendegast and John Sutcliffe, died almost at once, Sutcliffe having been shot in the head twice.

The deaths of the two young men in Liverpool, both of whom were in their twenties, seemed to bring the city to its senses. The government capitulated to the demands of the strikers and the men returned to work. There was a sound tactical reason for the government of Herbert Asquith to capitulate in this way. The fact that the railways had ground to a halt in many places meant, in effect, that it was impossible to move troops from one district to another. There was little chance of bringing reinforcements to where they were most needed. Churchill summed the case up with his usual pithiness, by stating bluntly, ‘They have beaten us!’

The disturbances in Liverpool were not the worst that summer. In the Welsh town of Llanelli, troops also opened fire on strikers and in the resulting chaos, six people died. In Tredegar, in South Wales, the first anti-Jewish pogrom in Britain since the Middle Ages took place. Elements of the Somerset Light Infantry and the Worcester Regiment restored order by using bayonet charges through the streets. Cavalry were also used.

While the disorders in the provinces continued, the capital became an armed camp, with troops pouring into London from the main army bases. Hyde Park and other central London parks were given over to the military, and during that summer over 12,000 soldiers were quartered in London. This was a show of force, designed to remind people that the government was backed, ultimately, by the power of guns and bayonets. Soldiers guarded railway stations and patrolled the lines.

It is perhaps hardly surprising that during this particular summer – when the government was struggling desperately to control the streets and prevent what some politicians feared was the precursor to a general workers’ uprising – discussing the finer details of the franchise was not at the forefront of the minds of the Prime Minister or Home Secretary.

There is no doubt at that Herbert Asquith, the Prime Minister from 1908 onwards, was personally opposed to granting women the vote, but in fairness to him, it must be observed that he had much on his plate during those years of suffragette militancy. We have looked at some of the problems – industrial action and rioting – which appeared at the time very much like an incipient workers’ revolution. It is now time to ask ourselves whether Asquith could actually have given women the vote before 1914, even had he wished to do so.

The Liberal governments from 1905 to 1914 found it very hard to push through some of their legislation, even on subjects they felt very strongly about. This was not fully appreciated at the time and has been all but forgotten today. At the election held in early 1906, the Liberals defeated the Conservatives, gaining 400 seats, compared to the 157 which the Conservatives held. It was a stunning landslide victory and if ever a government in twentieth-century Britain could be said to enjoy a strong mandate, that government was Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s administration. The House of Lords, though, was still overwhelmingly dominated by unelected Conservative peers and they were determined to sabotage any Liberal government’s reforms of which they disapproved. This obstructionism began with the blocking of the 1906 Education Bill and continued until crisis point was reached in 1909, with the rejection of Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’.

The House of Lords had at this time complete power to meddle in, by either amending or rejecting, any of the legislation coming from the lower chamber. In 1893, for example, the Lords had rejected an Irish Home Rule Bill and there had been nothing at all that the government of the day could do about it. The House of Lords saw it as their duty to oppose any radical changes. When Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George tried to introduce new taxes to pay for Old Age Pensions and other benefits for the poor, the House of Lords refused to pass the budget.

Given the reactionary and intransigent nature of the Upper House in the early part of the twentieth century, we have to ask how they would have reacted to a bill which promised to widen the franchise in this country and give the vote to working-class people or women. The answer is, of course, that they would probably have rejected such a proposal outright. This situation, with a House of Commons unable to rule effectively, led to the greatest constitutional crisis of the twentieth century, which resulted in two general elections in one year; plans to abolish the House of Lords; and even a threat to the institution of the monarchy itself.

It is beyond the scope of the present book to explore this episode in depth and it is probably sufficient to remind readers that between their coming to power in 1905 and the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, it would very likely have been impossible for the Liberal government to legislate in favour of female suffrage, even had they wished to do so. From 1911 onwards, when they might have been able to extend the franchise, the government’s hands were full with other and more desperately urgent matters. Not only that, the actions of the suffragettes themselves ensured that the government could not make any concessions without appearing foolish and weak.

The crisis of 1911, involving widespread strikes and fierce rioting, the likes of which had not been seen in England for a century or more, was bad, but it was not the worst threat facing the government. No sooner had the ‘Great Unrest’ quietened down a little, than Asquith found the nation quite literally on the verge of civil war.

The civil disorder and industrial unrest had been serious, but an even greater menace to the stability of the United Kingdom was looming. This centred around the demands made in Ireland for Home Rule, and a government of their own in Dublin. The ‘Irish Question’ had been a thorn in the side of successive British governments for many years. The Liberal government led by Herbert Asquith decided to resolve the matter by granting self-government to this predominantly Catholic island, which had for years been an integral part of the United Kingdom. This did not please the Protestants in Ulster, who threatened to fight such a move with armed force. Thousands of rifles were smuggled to Ireland and senior army officers openly sympathised with the Protestants. The Irish Nationalists were also running guns into the country and preparing to face their opponents in open warfare.

In 1913 and 1914, at the height of the suffragette campaign, the government was therefore faced with the very real prospect of civil war in Ireland, combined with mutiny in the army and an uncertainty that officers would obey orders from London. There could hardly have been a more serious crisis than the threat of civil war and the fragmentation of the United Kingdom, and so it is not surprising that Asquith and his cabinet focused the whole of their attention on this in 1913 and early 1914, rather than tackling the less urgent question of how and when to extend the franchise.

As if these domestic difficulties were not enough, there was also the fact that from 1905 onwards, Britain had been engaged in an arms race with Germany. This entailed both nations frantically rushing to build bigger and better battleships known as Dreadnoughts, a contest associated with the rise of Germany as an industrial and colonial power and the consequent menace, as it was then perceived, to Britain’s strategic interests. In 1902 Lord Selborne, First Lord of the Admiralty, said, ‘If the German Fleet becomes superior to ours, the German Army can conquer this country’. This mistrust of, and rivalry with, Germany grew steadily during the Edwardian Era, culminating in the war between Britain and Germany which began in 1914.

Fear of Germany and, in particular, an invasion of Britain by Germany was a popular theme in books and newspapers in the early part of the century. Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands in 1903 and William Le Queux’s The Invasion of 1910 both dealt with invasions of this country by Germany. During the Agadir crisis of 1911 war with Germany very nearly became a reality, with the British Atlantic Fleet being ordered to the English Channel in a sabre-rattling exercise.

We have looked at some of the major problems facing the British government in the years of suffragette militancy, which ran roughly from 1905 to 1914. There were many other difficulties at that time, all of which occupied the minds of the prime minister and his cabinet far more than the finer points of equal or universal suffrage. Something further to consider is that the problems facing the administrations of those years often involved the threat of force by factions who wished to get their own way. No government can afford at such times to be seen as weak and vulnerable to pressure. As soon as the suffragettes began to use violence in pursuance of their cause, they doomed that cause irrevocably. Surrendering to the menace of bombs and arson would, to give one example, have encouraged the paramilitary forces mustering in Ireland to challenge even more vigorously the government in London. Making the government appear weak and apt to surrender to the threat of violence, would have given an unfortunate message to others hoping to force the hand of Asquith’s administration.

The portrait of the Edwardian Age, which has been outlined above, may be unfamiliar to many readers. We tend, as already remarked, to see Britain between Victoria’s death in 1901 and the outbreak of war in 1914 as a country at the height of imperial power, a nation enjoying stability and peace. In a sense, it was, but only by direct comparison with the slaughter of the trenches on the Western Front and the disruption of the world war which brought that period of British history to an end. Because of this, we have a distorted idea of how the suffragettes fitted into the scheme of things. We often think of them as radicals fighting against the stultifying complacency of a well-ordered and self-satisfied society.

According to this perception, a stubborn and reactionary government refused to take heed of the legitimate demands of disenfranchised women and so they were compelled to take direct action. The reality was that the governments of the day were fighting desperately to preserve peace and order, while simultaneously doing their best to raise the standard of living for average working men and women. They did this while fending off a succession of crises, some of which could have resulted in catastrophe for the country.

From the safe and comfortable perspective of the twenty-first century, the question of women’s votes appears to be an absurdly simple one: all that the prime minister of the day had to do was pass a law giving women the vote. In fact, as we have seen, the whole question of extending the parliamentary franchise beyond the limits which had been set by the Reform and Redistribution Acts of 1884–1885 was immensely complicated and no two groups even agreed upon the terms under which it should be undertaken.

The Liberal governments before the First World War found themselves, on more than one occasion, gazing into the abyss, facing the very real prospect of the violent disintegration of the United Kingdom and a state of affairs where the army might end up playing a role in political affairs. In addition to this, these administrations were preparing for the possibility, which became a stark reality in 1914, of a European war. If they were more concerned with tackling such matters and tended as a result to neglect the demands of a few hundred, largely middle-class women, it is possible in retrospect to understand their priorities.

So much for the condition of the nation. What then of the Women’s Social and Political Union? What sort of organisation was it and what were those in charge of the WSPU like? The closest parallels to the WSPU that some former members were able to see in later years were found in the fascist movements of Italy and Germany.

It is time now to look closely at the movement which brought forth the suffragettes and to examine in detail what they believed in and how far they were prepared to go for those beliefs.