Friday, December 15, 1911, To the Editor of The Manchester Guardian, “The Proposed Women’s Suffrage Amendment”

This is the last letter Davison would write in 1911, and the last one for many months, forin early 1912 she was incarcerated in Holloway prison. Here she warms once more to the theme that men can be as “illogical” as women. The subject is the WSPU’s rejection of woman suffrage dependent on “arbitrarily determined” qualifications such as residency requirements or income requirements–-“fancy franchises” based on an arbitrarily determined qualification. The WSPU sought the parliamentary vote for women on the same basis as men had it, a simple goal, yet one that seemed in December, 1911, both tantalizingly near and agonizingly distant. Her conclusion that the goal will be achieved by “frank and fearless militancy—the policy of keeping on pestering” presages her own actions and writing in the year to come.

Sir, –The letter of ‘Disfranchised by Marriage’ proves completely and incontrovertibly how absurd is the position taken up by Mr. Lloyd George and those who agree with him as to the solution of the women’s suffrage question. The only logical and possible ground on which to fight for this reform is that insisted upon by the W.S.P.U.—‘The vote on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men,’—otherwise the question is landed into the old quagmire of ‘fancy’ franchises against which Mr. Lloyd George and others have inveighed so much in the past. It really is extraordinary how illogical people are on this franchise question? [sic] You yourself sought to beg it by declaring that the new bill will not mean a manhood suffrage qualification, but a change from a number of fancy franchises to that of residence—another fancy franchise. It is no doubt possible to cure one evil by another evil, but often the last stage of the experiment is worse than the first.

The plain truth of the matter is that the sex which claims to be logical is so absolutely illogical that it seems impossible to pin it down to fact. Hence it is that frank and fearless militancy—the policy of keeping on pestering—seems to be ‘the only way.’ Yours, &c.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31 Coram Street, London, W.C.

[Why is the qualification by a brief residence a ’fancy franchise’? It includes everybody who has any kind of fixed abode. We can imagine nothing much less fanciful. If the female sex is the logical one our correspondent is perhaps not a good sample of it. To try to wreck every practicable policy is apparently her conception of the logical way of setting about to get something done.—Ed. ‘GUARD.’]

December 12, 1911, To the Editor of The Manchester Guardian

Among the charges leveled at the suffragettes was the charge that their partisans were paid employees, “hirelings” who were more interested in their pay than the cause that they worked to promote. Davison’s retort to such a charge leveled by one Katherine Beaumont reflects the reality of the situation. Middle class and upper class women of means were able to “support the cause,” but women without financial security required some sort of support in order to allow them to live and to protest. Just where Davison fell on the spectrum of the comfortable is not entirely clear. She speaks in passing of holding various kinds of employment—secretary, journalist—all related in some way or another to language and writing, which were her passions.

Miss Davison writes from 31, Coram-street, London: — Your correspondent Katharine Beaumont, of Bath, casts some unfounded aspersions on those who lifted up ‘the voice’ on behalf of women at Mr. Lloyd George’s meeting on November 24. She repeats as the remark of one of the men ejected the remark made by Mr. Lloyd George himself, that the interrupter had earned his railway fare. None of the men themselves would make such a remark as that. It was Mr. Lloyd George who on a previous occasion characterized such men as ‘paid hirelings.’ If Mr. Lloyd George knew the amount of batterings these brave men receive on these occasions he would rather exclaim that such heroism was ‘without money and without price.’ Miss Beaumont asserts that the curse of the women’s movement is the paid agitator. That shows how little she knows of this militant movement, of the countless sacrifices of position, money, friends, and all that enriches life. She apparently is ignorant of the fact that most of the militant and other work is done entirely voluntarily by those who can possibly afford to do so. As for the few who cannot possibly devote their lives to this movement that they love so well unless a little money is given to them to keep body and soul together, there is a true saying that ‘the labourer is worthy of his hire,’ and surely never were there more devoted labourers!

December 1, 1911, to the Editor of The Manchester Guardian, Woman Suffrage and the Government: Militant Methods

Another exchange between Davison and the editor of The Guardian that turns on radically different perceptions of the role of violence in politics and social reform, the history of its success, and the fidelity of the Liberal Government to its promises about a Woman Suffrage bill. In citing the Franchise Riots of 1866 and the English Civil War, Davison is not only recalling “righeous violence” that succeeded by virtue of the justice of its cause, but also men’s use of violence to achieve their goals. Is this extreme route, a last resort, she implies, to be denied to women who also know their cause to be just? The day this letter appeared was the day that Davison determined to end her current employement as the first step to her militant acts of arson aimed at pillar, or mail, boxes.

Sir, — In your comment on Miss Christabel Pankhurst’s straightforward letter on militancy you say: ‘Miss Pankhurst is certainly now definite enough and wrong enough. She cannot achieve what she proposes by the means she designs and she ought not to.’ Will you allow me to say to this, ‘Wait and see’? All English history gives the congtradiction to your assertion. In our history we read of many deeds of violence done to win reform. The whole Civil War was such an example. But the blame for the violence lies not on those who do it, but on those who drive the agitators to such extremes. The truth of this is proved by the famous scene between Mr. Beales and Mr.Walpole, the House Secretary, on the day after the Hyde Park riots.

You object to the use of militancy because you assert that if militancy succeeds ‘anybody else could obtain their ends, quite irrespective of their merits, by similar means.’ May I here quote some words from Molesworth’s History of England, vol. 3, in the description of the Franchise Riots of 1866?–

‘Wise and thoughtful men saw that these gatherings and disturbances were the expression of a strong feeling that could not safely be despised. They knew that neither Mr. Beales nor any of his associates could stir these multitudes as they had done unless there were real and deeply felt grievances at the bottom of the demand for reform made in this violent and unpleasant manner.’

No undeserving cause could succeed by violence. The success of violence is the test of the righteousness of the cause, and the militancy of the W.S.P.U. has justified itself at every turn of events. The utterances of Mr. Asquity or Mr. Lloyd George are proof enough if there were not also the great and growing feeling in the country.

Are you sure that it is ‘an incomparably more difficult task’ to expel from the Cabinet the Prime Minister and the minority opposed to woman suffrage than ‘to carry women’s suffrage under existing conditions’? In order to do either Mr. Lloyd George would have ‘to stand or fall’ by the course he adopted if he meant to win. The bolder, the easier and also the more heroic, way would be for him to threaten his resignation from the Cabinet (which could not afford his loss) unless the Government offered a Government measure giving equal franchise rights to women as well as men. Yours, &

Emily Wilding Davison
31, Coram Street, London, W.C.
November 29

[The really ludicrous position is that Mr. Lloyd George is fighting to enfranchise seven million women and the militants are smashing un-offending people's windows and breaking up benevolent societies' meetings in a desperate effort to prevent him. To compare that with any great popular uprising of the past is too absurd a plea to require a confutation.--ED. 'GUARD.']