The Women's Victory and After: 1911-1918. Millicent Garrett Fawcett
little book was obscene, it would have been simpler to reply that the prosecution would be unsuccessful on this account; but this straightforward course was avoided. It became evident to us that the object of the whole business was to bring up the question in the House of Commons as often as possible with a view of prejudicing the public against the suffrage and the suffragists, and to produce the impression that we were people who delighted in the circulation of vile literature. This went on for about a fortnight, when I happened to have the opportunity of a conversation, on an entirely different subject, with a highly placed officer of the Government, a member of the House of Lords. While I was talking to him on the subject on which I had come to see him, it occurred to me to speak to him also about the little plot to discredit the suffrage movement in which the Home Secretary was playing the leading rôle. "Is it with your knowledge and consent, Lord ——," I asked, "that your colleague, Mr. McKenna, is keeping before the public as long as he possibly can the interesting fact that he is unable to make up his mind whether or not to prosecute me and the N.U.W.S.S., of which I am President, for circulating obscene literature? Three questions have already been asked on this subject in the House of Commons within the last eleven days, and it is impossible to say how many more times the point will be discussed in the House and reported in every paper in Great Britain."3 I also told him something of Dr. Louisa Martindale, her high character and first-rate professional position, and also (rather maliciously on my part) that her family were very active and highly esteemed Liberals in Sussex, and that gratuitous insults to them would be keenly resented, and might possibly even have a political reaction. He appeared startled, and, as far as I could gather, had had no previous knowledge of what had been going on. He said very little, and promised me nothing. But from that date the attack upon Dr. Martindale, her book, and the N.U.W.S.S., entirely ceased. The incident did not increase our esteem for the antisuffrage party in the House of Commons. A few months later I had proof, if proof were needed, that the Government did not seriously believe me to be a person capable of circulating obscene literature, for I was invited by the Government to become a member of the Royal Commission on Venereal Disease, a position which could certainly not have been offered if the Government had shared Mr. McKenna's doubts as to my character. I was not able to accept the invitation because my suffrage work entirely absorbed me, and I saw no prospect of its claims becoming less urgent in the near future.
The Session of 1912 dragged its interminable length along. It lasted for thirteen months, from January, 1912, to January, 1913, both inclusive. The Government were slow in producing their Reform Bill. In May, however, it was brought forward, and it did not come up for Second Reading until July 12th, 1912. In the Second Reading debate Mr. Asquith, Prime Minister and Leader of the House, expressed himself as follows:
"This Bill does not propose to confer the franchise on women; whatever extensions of the franchise it makes are to male persons only. Speaking for myself, I cannot help remembering that the House at an earlier stage of the Session rejected with, I think, sufficient emphasis the proposal to confer the franchise on women; and, so far as I am concerned, I dismiss at this moment as altogether improbable the hypothesis that the House of Commons is likely to stultify itself by reversing in the same Session the considered judgment at which it has arrived."
That is to say, the rejection of the Conciliation Bill by a majority of 14 in the previous March was to be taken as "the considered judgment of the House of Commons," whereas its passage in May, 1911, by a majority of 167 counted for nothing at all. What the passage just quoted did stand for was the continued and bitter hostility of the Prime Minister to women's suffrage in any form, and as a renewal of his S.O.S. call to his followers to come to his deliverance. The fortunes of all the little politicians "in the make" are absolutely in the hands of the Prime Minister—more so at that moment than perhaps at any other period of our history. To please the Prime Minister and serve his purposes indicated the road which led to success and preferment, and he made it absolutely plain what was the best possible way to please him in this matter of women's enfranchisement.
This was truly a time when we had "to go on dancing when the fiddle stopped," and we did not decline the task. We held two immense meetings in the Albert Hall, the combined collections at which totalled nearly £13,000, and also organized an even more than usually vigorous campaign throughout the country in support of the inclusion of women in the Government Reform Bill; there were twenty-one by-elections during the year, in all of which the N.U.W.S.S. took an active part, making suffrage a very live issue in the country, and we also lost no opportunity of raising the question in the House on other Bills which came before it.
But the change from a majority of 167 in 1911 to a minority of 14 in 1912 gave a fatal shock to what had hitherto been our election policy—namely, the support at all contested elections of the candidate (irrespective of party) whom we deemed from his answers to our questions, his personal record, and other indications, to be "the best friend of women's suffrage." When the Conciliation Bill was defeated in March, 1912, 42 of these "best friends" had voted against the Bill, and 91 had abstained from supporting it. To lean on such "friends" as these was to lean on a broken reed. We did not abandon the essential principle of our election policy, but we gave a new and improved interpretation of the meaning to be attributed to the words "best friend"; and as a result of a special council held for the purpose in May, 1912, it was decided that a friend of suffrage who had the support of his party upon our question was a better friend than one who belonged to a party which was either hostile or neutral. The immense powers of party in our politics made it practically certain that this was the only safe line to take. There were, it is true, a handful of men, in both the Liberal and Conservative ranks, who had shown themselves such strong and convinced suffragists as to be capable of disregarding the party whip when it was used against us. These we defined as "tried friends"—tried not only on the platform, but in the fiery ordeal of the House of Commons, and these we excepted from the new definition we had agreed to make of the words "the best friend of women's suffrage."
Chapter III
The Election Fighting Fund
"My centre is giving way, my right wing is falling back. The situation is excellent. I am attacking."—Marshal Foch to G.H.Q.
The change of policy indicated at the end of the last chapter was adopted after full deliberation and discussion at a council meeting at which our 411 societies were represented, and at which, as was to be expected, there was an important minority who objected to it. For at this council we resolved on a change of rules. The general objects of the N.U.W.S.S. in by-elections were defined as follows:
1. To shorten the term of office of the Cabinet as at present constituted, especially by opposing antisuffrage Ministers.
2. To strengthen any party in the House of Commons which adopts women's suffrage as part of its official programme.
At by-elections we decided that the N.U. should support those candidates whose return would best promote the foregoing objects, provided that:
(a) No Government candidate should be supported.
(b) No candidate shall be supported who does not answer all the National Union questions in the affirmative.
Another clause provided for the exemption of "tried friends" from these regulations. It would, of course, have been an absurdity for suffragists to oppose such men as the late Mr. Walter McLaren or Lord Robert Cecil, who had shown through the stress and strain of many years of parliamentary life that they were prepared to act independently of party in cases where electoral justice to women was involved.
But our change of policy was in effect a declaration of war against the official Liberal Party and of support of the Labour Party, which was the only party which had made women's suffrage part of its programme.
This not unnaturally laid us open to the charge of having abandoned our non-party attitude; but I thought at the time, and I think still, that it was the only possible attitude for a truly non-party association such as ours to adopt. We were making no break with our non-party professions so long as we were prepared to give our whole-hearted support to any party which made the enfranchisement