ABSTRACT
After Emmeline’s death, many tributes were paid to her; although she had spent her life campaigning for a number of varied social causes, it was for her leadership of the militant wing of the women’s suffrage movement that she was remembered, at home and abroad. ‘Emmeline Goulden Pankhurst’, proclaimed the New York Herald Tribune, was ‘the most remarkable political and social agitator of the early part of the twentieth century and the supreme protagonist of the campaign for the electoral enfranchisement of women’, a view echoed in the British press, even by the left-wing Daily Herald.1 Mrs. Pankhurst belonged to that class of famous women like Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale claimed the Evening Standard; she was the very edge ‘of that weapon of willpower by which British women freed themselves from being classed with children and idiots in the matter of exercising the franchise’.2 Even Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, now president of the WFL, spoke generously of the ‘gentle’ autocrat who had ended her connection with the WSPU. ‘Not only all women in Britain, but all women in the world, owe a deep debt of gratitude and honour to Mrs. Pankhurst. Without her genius and courage they could not have attained for many, many years the position they hold to-day.’3 But perhaps it was Beatrice Harraden, writer and ex-WSPU member, who encapsulated most of what Emmeline Pankhurst had represented. ‘She was a born leader’, Beatrice wrote, ‘one had only to hear her even for a short time to be caught by her eloquence, and to be convinced that she had greatness of spirit – and vision.’ She continued:
Christabel Pankhurst may have supplied the youthful vivacity of the new suffrage organization [WSPU], but it was her mother’s character which formed its bedrock. It was at Mrs. Pankhurst’s bidding that women of all conditions of life, young and old alike, sprang up to join in the militant campaign for votes for women, justice for women, equal chances for women, the open road, a free pass for women – demands so long and patiently toiled for through long years of discouragement, by the older constitutional societies. Her selfishness, her courage, and her endurance will remain implanted in our memories as an abiding source
of inspiration. We are mourning for her to-day, but with a grief which has in it the balm of pride and triumph: for we are consoled by the certain belief that time will give to her the honoured niche in history which is her due.4
