Glimpses of Britain. Reader - стр. 16

She and Emmeline then encouraged their supporters to follow suit, and milked every drop of publicity when they were punished.

Some of the protests were little more than stunts. Burning rags were stuffed into letterboxes, keyholes blocked with lead, chairs flung into the Serpentine, flower beds damaged, and envelopes containing red pepper and snuff sent to every Cabinet minister.

But as we have already seen, there was also real violence – with repeated attempts to assault the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. Amid police reports of suffragettes practising with revolvers, there were even fears he might be assassinated. On one occasion, his car was forced to slow down to avoid a woman lying in the road. Other women promptly jumped out and belaboured him over the head with dog whips, his head protected only by his top hat.

Many of the suffragettes jailed for such attacks won further celebrity by going on hunger strike. The Government introduced force-feeding, inserting tubes through their noses and down their throats while warders held them down.

It was exactly what the Pankhursts wanted. They intended their violence to provoke an extreme reaction and produce the impression of innocent women being persecuted by an oppressive state.

Harsh though the word may seem, such manipulative cynicism is the hallmark of terrorism. Worse still, the suffragette leaders washed their hands of any responsibility for the followers they lured into violence.

It was an act of monstrous cowardice that made victims of the very women they were purporting to lead to liberation. But such tactics were typical of the Pankhursts, who ran their movement in autocratic style and cast out any colleagues who dared to voice dissent.

Both women adored the limelight and the opportunity it gave them to strike melodramatic poses. They shared a pathological self-importance and gloried in their chosen role as martyrs.

Christabel, however, spoilt the effect by running away to Paris in 1912 to avoid further risk of being jailed. There she spent her time sightseeing and visiting fashionable shops, while encouraging those she had left behind to launch a campaign of arson.

In truth, these militant tactics were counter-productive and merely made the Government more resistant to reform. The Pankhursts’ response was to crank up the idea of the war against male lust. Stone-throwing, arson and physical attacks, argued Emmeline, were all a means of cleansing society – the only way to eradicate the “Social Evil” of prostitution.