OUT OF THE DEEP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUT OF THE DEEP.

"IN THE DAYS OF MY YOUTH."

A SUFFRAGETTE'S SOTTL.

(By E. SYLVIA PANKHUEST.)

In the days of my childhood there whirled about me the storms and enthusiasms of Radicalism, Women's Suffrage and the early Socialist movement, of the new Trade Unionism, in which the names of John Barns, Ben Tillett and Tom Mann were presently overshadowed by the great personality of Keir Hardie.

I stood by-my father at many a street corner, whilst he spoke from a chair, or soap box, and the tears and the cheers of the people flowed to his words, myself perhaps the most poignantly affected in all the cro-tyd.

I heard tie first halting efforts ol my mother to become a speaker. Heard her practising in the streets of Openshaw and Gorton, industrial suburbs of Manchester, where she "was elected to the Board of Guardians, and where my father, Dr. Pankhuraf;, stood as one of the 28 Independent Labour' party candidates for Parliament in 1596, all of whom, including Heir Hardie Buffered defeat.

At the meetings in the slums I was ashamed that I wore sound shoes and warm clothes, though our home life was simple in the extreme.

I dreamed, with a passionate longing, of a some-day when want and privation should be no more.

The streets were so grey, and my young heart longed for colour and beauty oi form. I would be an artist like William Morris and Walter Crane. I would work for the people. I would decorate halls, make banners and pageants, to rejoice and hearten the popular movements. My father died. We were plunged into economic struggle. I won scholarships and educated myself for my mission. Conflicting Urges. Then our militant Suffragette movement arose. My conscience was torn by the question: "The studio, or the platform and the prison? In a fighting movement can the services of the artist compare in value with that of the active platform propagandist and organiser?" Whatever may be true of the unconscious needs ci the spirit, the movement, in its active manifestations, constantly seemed to answer "no" to this anxious question torturing my mind.

Then, to the call of the militant movement was joined the old poignant call of the slums. "Of what use, cried my heart, are a thousand pictures of maternity to the mother who has not food for her child?"

Then, forever, I laid down my brush. I settled in the East End, to rouse a movement amongst the poorest of women. I endured the prison and the hunger strike. The roads were black with the people who fiocked from the cheerless alleys of Bow and Bethnal Green, of Poplar and Canning Town, to Westminster or to Holloway Prison, marching those weary miles after a hard daVa work was done.

Then the war came. Men were called up. Separation allowances were slow in coming, babies lacked milk and older children food. I toiled for the maternity and infants' welfare centres, for higher separation allowances and pensions, far improved housing and for housing regulations. I took deputations of old-age pensioners to the House of Commons, of women clamouring for more food, to tha Cabinet, committee and Board of Trade, of mothers of conscientious objectors to the War OSce. I "went amongst the victims of the air raids. I toiled till I saw that the voiceless women about me, the poorest and meet oppressed, had roused themselves from a hopeless, helpless misery and subjection, had grown to speak and *h-in> for themselves.

JTrom the mean streets of the East End the women were coming forth for election a3 councillors and guardians} they were Parliamentary voters, and a seat in Parliament for tha poorest was not beyond their hope. I opened my eyes, and I saw that my youth waa fled.

Then I said, it is time that I should have a child of my own in whom I shall live again.