ABSTRACT

That Christmas of 1956, Christabel wrote a festive greeting to Jessie Kenney and Fred Pethick-Lawrence, reflecting not only on past times but also the present-day tyranny of the communist Soviet Union which, since the end of the Second World War, had occupied Eastern Europe. In Christabel’s Christmas letter to Jessie, there was no mention of such family embarrassment, merely a reference to the Second Coming of Christ as the only way to make wars cease on earth and to put an end to the ‘cruel tyranny’ suffered by the Hungarians, Poles ‘and millions of other human beings’. Helen replied that Fred could not remember any statement about obscene books and politely pointed out that neither she nor Fred interpreted Fulford’s words as she did. Christabel’s long, discursive letter to Sylvia only temporarily lessened her anxieties about the way in which suffragette history was being written.