Chapter Six #5
Aggie told about the rally they had organised in London on the day of the King’s Speech, the 19th of February.
‘We wanted to have a march to Trafalgar Square, but the police wouldn’t allow it, so we hired the Caxton Hall – it’s only half a mile from the Houses of Parliament, so we’d get the news quick of what was in the speech.
Some of us worried that the Caxton was too big, that if we only got a handful of people it’d look a proper failure and we’d be laughed at.
But we managed to get some money together. ’ She looked fondly at Clemmie.
‘Oh, I helped a little,’ she said shyly. ‘I wish I could have afforded more.’
‘Well, thanks to people like her, we got enough to pay the bus fares of three hundred women from the East End – and give them tea and buns. And in the end, word of the rally got round and a lot of respectable middle-class London ladies came, so we were nearly full by the time the speeches started.’
‘But the King’s Speech contained nothing on votes for women,’ Clemmie said.
‘Well, we didn’t have much hope,’ said Aggie.
‘If they wouldn’t promise it during the election campaign, why would they promise it after they’d won?
But we got some good publicity out of it.
The Daily Mirror wanted photographs, so Annie Kenney, Sylvia and me organised a procession from the tube station at St James’s Park to Caxton Hall, and the Mirror covered both their front and back pages with it. ’
‘The Daily Mirror – that’s Lord Northcliffe’s newspaper, isn’t it?’ said Nina. Mr Cowling had mentioned him, having met him several times. ‘Is he a supporter of votes for women? That would be very useful.’
‘I don’t suppose he gives a damn about it,’ Aggie said frankly, ‘but it’s a picture paper, so he’s got to have pictures. Our procession filled two pages for him for nothing.’
Clemmie said, ‘Don’t mind Aggie. She isn’t nearly as cynical as she sounds. You have to have hope, or you wouldn’t go on.’
‘Aye, well, it’s not going to happen tomorrow, Clem. It’s going to be a long job.’
‘So what’s happening now?’ Nina asked.
‘When the King’s Speech let us down, the committee decided to ask for an interview with the prime minister,’ said Clemmie. ‘Of course, he refused.’
‘So some of us marched up Downing Street and camped ourselves outside his door, just so he knew we weren’t going to go quietly,’ said Aggie.
‘Two of them actually managed to slip inside,’ said Clemmie.
‘And got thrown straight out again!’
‘Then Annie Kenney jumped up on the prime minister’s motor-car to make a speech—’
‘And all three got arrested.’
‘But the prime minister intervened and asked the police to release them without charge.’
‘That was nice of him,’ Nina said. She had heard of some suffragists being sent to prison, and the idea of a woman in prison was horrible.
Aggie shrugged. ‘We’d had all those pictures in the paper, you see.
He claimed we do things just to get notoriety, and he said it would be giving us what we wanted to put us up in front of a magistrate, so we’d to be let off.
It was like he was ignoring a child’s tantrum. They don’t take us seriously.’
‘Yet,’ said Clemmie. ‘The time will come…’
‘Still, we got something out of it,’ said Aggie, ‘because the Daily Mirror put our arrested three on its front page, and that got the prime minister to agree to receive a deputation. But it has to be from all the women’s suffrage societies. We’ll have to turn up with those feeble Nusses in tow.’
‘Nusses?’ Nina queried.
‘The National Union of Suffrage Societies – NUSS. They don’t like our methods, they like to be polite and ladylike and stick to what they call “constitutional methods”.
As if that’s ever worked in the last fifty years!
They call us the Wasps – you know, from WSPU – which I take as a compliment.
I’d like to sting all those damned stuffy MPs until they called fainites! ’
‘The Daily Mail has started calling the WSPU “suffragettes” to distinguish us from the non-militant suffragists,’ Clemmie said. ‘It’s a rather vulgar-sounding word, I think.’
‘Some of us are vulgar,’ said Aggie, defiantly.
‘Begging your pardon, Mrs Cowling, but when asking nicely doesn’t get you fairness or justice, I reckon you have to stick your tongue out, right to the roots.
Those East End women work damned hard all day, and then they have to go home and do all the domestic jobs their men won’t do.
Same with working women everywhere – they do twice as much as the men, but the men have the vote and they don’t. ’
‘But we will keep trying the polite methods too,’ Clemmie said. ‘This deputation to the prime minister – it’s an important step forward. They’ve asked me to be part of it,’ she told Nina, with a shy, pleased look.
‘When is it?’ Nina asked.
‘The 18th of May. I’m going to be one of seven women who make a speech.’
‘How exciting! I’m sure you’ll be wonderful. I wish I could be there to hear you. Unfortunately,’ she spread her hands in a graphic gesture, ‘I can’t go anywhere for the time being.’
‘You’re doing something equally important,’ Clemmie said loyally.
Nina thought Mrs Summers looked as if she didn’t agree with that word ‘equally’. She regarded Nina thoughtfully. ‘There’s always something you can do, Mrs Cowling, if you’re serious about helping the Cause. But are you? Serious, I mean?’