CAUSES OF THE SUFFRAGE REVOLT IN ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3084, 23 April 1913, Page 73

CAUSES OF THE SUFFRAGE REVOLT IN ENGLAND.

“THE MOTHER CREATURE AT BAY.” By Emmeline Pethick Lawrence. The story of the later developments of the militant Suffrage movement in England has gone all over the world and has aroused much comment everywhere. Much of the criticism expressed in America, as well as in distant parts of the British Empire, is founded upon ignorance of the causes that have led to the present state of revolt. Were all the facts and circumstances known, the general feeling of the English-speaking public would be one of appreciation and even wonder at the patience and long suffering of women who have been treated not only with political contempt and chicanery', but with physical violence never shown in similar circumstances to men.

The opponents of physical force must always remember that it was not militant Suffragists who chose that this battle for emancipation should be fought out on the plane of physical force. It was the British Liberal Government and its political adherents who deliberately forced it on to this plane, thinking that it was the plane where men have women at disadvantage. “ Women are physically weaker than men,” they argued, “ therefore when women come to ns with their demand for political liberty let us knock them about. That will soon put a stop to the trouble. - ’ In adopting this policy of physical force men resorted to methods of violence quite different from those that they use in similar circumstances against opponents of their own sex. It is a matter of common political experience that hecklers are allowed a very large measure of liberty at political meetings in England. Women were assaulted the very first time they asked questions in question time and insisted upon waiting for a reply. This difference in treatment was prompted by the very fact that in the minds of these political tacticians it is more politic to knock women about than to knock men about, owing to the probability that men would take up the challenge of physical force, but women would have to refuse it. The same consideration induced the Government at a subsequent time to send out an army of police to assault women who went forth in a peaceful deputation to the House of Commons. In November, 1911, a deputation of several hundred women, who went absolutely unarmed and did not attempt any violent action, was so brutally knocked about that one subsequently died and others have not yet recovered from the injuries they received. Had the policy of repression by violence succeeded, politicians would have been able to keep women’s just demand in abeyance for ever by falling back, when hard pressed by argument, upon the weapon of physical force. By accepting the challenge women have discredited the weapons of sheer physical force devoid of moral force, and proved that when they arc directed against a just cause they are impotent. It must be remembered also by those who condemn militancy that every other alternative excepting militancy has been taken away from women, who are steadfast in their determination rather to struggle for their liberty than to submit to their exclusion from citizenship. It can be shown by available statistics that Suffragists have held more political meetings during the last five years than all the other political parties put together. As a matter of fact, it would be impossible to hold greater out-door demonstrations than have been held. For, to get together greater concourses of people than those that have been gathered in Hyde Park —on one occasion the crowd ■was estimated by the London Times to number

half a million to three-quarters of a million people—would be incompatible with public safety. To organise greater processions than those that have marched through the streets of London, numbering fifty thousand to sixty thousand persons, is not feasible, because (as we are informed by the police) the limit of disorganisation in the traffic of London has been reached.

It would be impossible and useless to send greater petitions to Parliament than those that have been sent, comprising millions of signatures. There is no point in converting more members of Parliament. Over two-thirds of the House of Commons have pledged themselves in favour of the reform, though they can always find some excuse for breaking their pledges. FIFTY YEARS’ AGITATION. Everything that can be done in the way of constitutional agitation has been done for over 50 years, and, for the last five years especially, all records in educational propaganda have been broken. The only political result of it all is a sequence of Parliamentary tricks and betrayals yhich, in the words of Lord Robert Cecil, would have driven men “not to a casual outrage” but to an “insurrection. J Furthermore, much legislation affecting women both in their home life, in their industrial life, and in their economic afe, which in their voteless condition they have keenly resented, has been passed in the very teeth of this agitation. For example, they have been recently forced to contribute to the payment of salaries to over 600 members of Parliament who are not in any way responsible to them and do not even profess to represent their interests or their wishes.

Added lo this indirect provocation nas been the direct incitement to militancy on the part of responsible Cabinet Ministers, beginning in 1906 with the often quoted advice of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman “to keep on pestering,” emphasised by Mr Herbert Gladstone when he said: “Political dynamics are far more important than*political argument. Men have learnt their lesson, and know the necessity for establishing that force majeure which actuates and arms a Government for effective work. This is the task before the supporters of this great movement.” Women have been jeered at by Lord Haldane for their policy of “pinpricks,” and have been told to take “sterner measures.’ 5 They have been taunted by Mr John Burns ' with “scratching at the door which men have forced open.” Last of all, they have been told, in the recent speech made by Mr Hobhouse in Bristol, “ that in the case of the suffrage demand there has not been the kind of popular sentimental uprising which accounted for Nottingham Castle in 183 J or the Hyde Park railings in 1867.” Nottingham Castle, it will be remembered, was burnt to the ground, and the Hyde Park railings were broken down. It may be argued that these incitements were never intended to be taken seriously and acted upon. In that case they were taunts levelled at women’s dislike and avoidance to violence. And the anger of the Government the spokesmen of which these men are, and the anger of those who from party instincts or from the instincts of sex dominance support them, is the anger of the bully who is taken by surprise when his victim unexpectedly shows fight. The authorities, who deemed women weak, have combined in ruthlessly driving them to the wall. And now women, with their backs against the wall, have turned, and are defying the authorities in the name of outraged human nature. Th>y liave all the courage and all the final desperation of the mother-creature at bay.

Yes, that is the secret of the woman’s movement —the dawning in the consciousness of women of the sense of race motherhood and of the corresponding sense of human dignity which expresses itself in the determination to be included in the human commonwealth as a sovereign half of a sovereign people. The tragic thing is that men, instead of welcoming this new passion of racemotherhood in women, should drive it to the defensive. It is a sight to make gods and angels weep—the pioneer womanhood of the future, so farsaken yet so indomitable, doing desperate battle for her racemotherhood rights against all the organised powers of physical force! Of the unthinking crowd that hurl their denunciation at her, it must be pleaded, as it was for men of another race, “ they know not what they do.” Let there be no mistake. A new consciousness, a new idea, once it has become wrought into one substance with the human will, cannot be suppressed. There was a time when women’s emancipation was a question of argument, when the only appeal put forward' on its behalf was the appeal to reason. To that appeal the country was deaf. Now it is a battle between the inspired human will and the 11 old regime.” The divine right of the male electorate is a theory similar to the old theory of the divine "right of kings, which was quite logical and found acceptance for centuries. But in the face of a new race-conscious-ness wedded to indomitable will the theory ceased to correspond with the actualities of the woman’s movement to-day. The vote of men cannot coerce women. No political party, however strengthened by the vote of the male electorate, can force upon an awakened womanhood a system of government without consent. The present situation is deplorable. It threatens to become worse. It possesses all the elements of a great tragedy. Must the fate work itself out to the bitter end? Must the sacrifice of human and material substance, so costly to both sides, be paid to its uttermost farthing? It is not too late for some leading voice to speak, for some saviour of the people with the instincts fox statecraft to step in and persuade the country as a whole that the time has come for a reasonable compliance with the reasonable demand of women that they shall be the fellowcitizens of men in common service to the State.

That is the only way to put an end to militancy. Ancl it i 3 the right way.

Because the onlv strength of militancy is the justice of tne cause behind it. But for that it would have been stamped out long ago. But for that it could be stamiped out to-day. What those responsible for the Government of the country lamentably fail to see and understand is that they are up against a force that has all the spiritual reinforcement of a new religious faith. And that is a force against which repression cannot hope to prevail.