page_title: Emmeline Pankhurst
section_title: Conciliation, force-feeding attempt, and arson
hierarchical_section_title: Emmeline Pankhurst / Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) / Conciliation, force-feeding attempt, and arson
caption_attribution_description: English: A suffragette on hunger strike being forcibly fed with a nasal tube
context_page_description: Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist. She is best remembered for organizing the UK suffragette movement and helping women win the right to vote. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of women for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
  Born in the Moss Side district of Manchester to politically active parents, Pankhurst was introduced at the age of 14 to the women's suffrage movement. She founded and became involved with the Women's Franchise League, which advocated suffrage for both married and unmarried women. When that organisation broke apart, she tried to join the left-leaning Independent Labour Party through her friendship with socialist Keir Hardie but was initially refused membership by the local branch on account of her sex.
context_section_description: After the Liberal losses in the 1910 elections, ILP member and journalist Henry Brailsford helped organise a Conciliation Committee for Women's Suffrage, which gathered 54 MPs from various parties. The group's Conciliation Bill looked to be a narrowly defined but still significant possibility to achieve the vote for some women. Thus the WSPU agreed to suspend its support for window-breaking and hunger strikes while it was being negotiated. When it became clear that the bill would not pass, Pankhurst declared: "If the Bill, in spite of our efforts, is killed by the Government, then ... I have to say there is an end to the truce." When it was defeated, Pankhurst led a protest march of 300 women to Parliament Square on 18 November. They were met with aggressive police response, directed by Home Secretary Winston Churchill: officers punched the marchers, twisted arms, and pulled on women's breasts. Although Pankhurst was allowed to enter Parliament, Prime Minister Asquith refused to meet her. The incident became known as Black Friday.  Her sister Mary Jane, who had attended the protest, too, was arrested for the third time, a few days later. She was sentenced to a month of imprisonment. On Christmas Day she died at the home of their brother Herbert Goulden, two days after her release.
  As subsequent Conciliation Bills were introduced, WSPU leaders advocated a halt to militant tactics. In March 1912 the second bill was in jeopardy and Pankhurst joined a fresh outbreak of window-smashing. Extensive property damage led police to raid the WSPU offices. Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence were tried at the Old Bailey and convicted of conspiracy to commit property damage. Christabel, who by 1912 was the chief coordinator for the organisation, was also wanted by police. She fled to Paris, where she directed WSPU strategy in exile. Inside Holloway Prison Emmeline Pankhurst staged her first hunger strike to improve conditions for other suffragettes in nearby cells; she was quickly joined by Pethick-Lawrence and other WSPU members. She described in her autobiography the trauma caused by force-feeding during the strike: "Holloway became a place of horror and torment. Sickening scenes of violence took place almost every hour of the day, as the doctors went from cell to cell performing their hideous office." When prison officials tried to enter her cell, Pankhurst raised a clay jug over her head and announced: "If any of you dares so much as to take one step inside this cell I shall defend myself."
  Pankhurst was spared further force-feeding attempts after this incident, but she continued to violate the law and – when imprisoned – starve herself in protest. During the following two years she was arrested numerous times but was frequently released after several days because of her ill-health. Later, the Asquith government enacted the Cat and Mouse Act, which allowed similar releases for other suffragettes facing ill-health due to hunger strikes. Prison officials recognised the potential public relations disaster that would erupt if the popular WSPU leader were force-fed or allowed to suffer extensively in jail. Still, police officers arrested her during talks and as she marched. She tried to evade police harassment by wearing disguises and eventually the WSPU established a jujutsu-trained female bodyguard squad to physically protect her against the police. She and other escorts were targeted by police, resulting in violent scuffles as officers tried to detain Pankhurst.
  In 1912 WSPU members adopted arson as another tactic to win the vote. After Prime Minister Asquith had visited the Theatre Royal in Dublin, suffragette activists Gladys Evans, Mary Leigh, Lizzie Baker and Mabel Capper of Oxford Street, Manchester attempted to cause an explosion using gunpowder and benzine, which resulted in minimal damage. During the same evening Mary Leigh threw an axe at the carriage containing John Redmond (leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party), the Lord Mayor, and Asquith. Over the next two years women set fire to a refreshments building in Regent
caption: Pankhurst was horrified by the screams of women being force-fed during hunger strikes. In her autobiography she wrote: "I shall never while I live forget the suffering I experienced during the days when those cries were ringing in my ears."[81]
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