Statement by Mr William Thomson, witness to the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst, March 1914 (National Records of Scotland reference: HH55/336/57) 

Transcript:

The Demoralizing influence of the Glasgow Riot

Without touching the question of responsibility I wish to say a few words on the Glasgow Suffrage Riot from the point of view of its demoralising influence on everybody concerned. To set large detachments of police to storm a hall or its platform in order to secure a single individual conscientiously supported by a meeting that embraces a large part of the elite of the citizens must at all times be a hazardous trial of the moral qualities of the men on whom that is imposed. But when the assailed are wholly women, mostly tenderly nurtured, and well educated, the risk of demoralisation is enormously increased. And accordingly it is perhaps not wonderful that the Glasgow police, feeling themselves to be employed on a degrading mission, and irritated, as will happen, by the very feebleness of the handful of women who put up nevertheless such a spirited resistance, lost their heads, and did deeds of which right thinking men can only be ashamed. And if this was the pitiful quandary of the police, it is impossible for the authorities, for the Scotch Secretary, for the Government or for the House of Commons or for the Magistrates of this City to feel any pride in such exploits as the Glasgow raid. To do so would argue a peculiar meanness of spirit not yet common among men. To feel neither proud nor ashamed but simply callous, is unfortunately all too common at this opening of a new century. It is none the less an evidence of degradation. The next class prejudicially affected are those of brutal instincts - see their unsigned letters in the newspapers - to whom the spectacle of stalwart policemen smiting slightly-built women, women unarmed, or pathetically armed, seems to afford a mysterious gratification. Such sink a step lower in brutishness and constitute a bad seed for future crops. Next comes the highly respectable people who never in their lives got down to the bed-rock of anything resembling a thought, or saw any injustice or oppression that caused their hearts to burn. Let us pass them by without further remark, they are not the backbone of a nation. All these groups fail to see the difference between suffragettes whose militancy would vanish at a wave of the wand of justice, and submerged criminals such as are the despair of the forces of law and order in all civilised countries. Lastly there are the men and women of generous instincts and capable of thought. These, whether or not they approve of militancy, are filled with admiration for women, who, misjudgedly or not, have left selfish comfort behind in order to fight, even at the loss of friends, of liberty, of health, and of life itself, for a great cause, the cause of all humanity. It is cheap criticism to say that the women who rallied round Mrs Pankhurst were infringing the law. I cannot believe there is a man of those whom I am now addressing, who does not in his heart admire them for their loyalty to a leader whom they regard as the best of women, and who does not recognise in that spirit of theirs the most valuable pledge for the future stability of our country.

I heard a group of men in the back gallery, non-suffragists, but curious. Their comment on the conduct of the Police authorities was that it was damnable. I would fain believe that you also gentlemen, had you witnessed the scene in St Andrew's Hall, would have pronounced it damnable. A considerable group of girls of 18 from secondary schools, also curious to see a woman so much talked of, attended the meeting. They were filled with indignation, and are now, I am told, seeking further instruction and information. I need not tell you of the infectious influence of such movements in a school. In the five days following Mrs Pankhurst's arrest no fewer than 120 women presented themselves at the W.S.P.U. Office to be enrolled as members. Such is the effect of police raids of the type of the Glasgow one. If Mrs Pankhurst's arrest had to be carried out again there might be thousands of men in the neighbouring streets to protect her, and such a menace would certainly oblige the authorities to forbid the use of the hall for militant suffrage purposes. I invite you to say whither all this leads if it is not to coercive measures of ever increasing stringency and violence and to a corresponding series of social explosions of ever widening disaster. Perhaps you may ask wherein, on my own showing, lies the demoralisation of those whom I have described as of more generous mould. In this, I answer – that they come to look on civic and constitutional Government as the centre and source of all anarchy, and that their contempt for law, even just and beneficent law, may go far beyond the bounds of reason, and threaten the social organism, in the long run, with dissolution. I beseech you, gentlemen, to give your voices for the cessation of brutal and brutalising measures, and let the land have peace in the simple and only way this can be done. It is time to stop tinkering at superficial symptoms and come to root causes. It is not permissible for a strong city or a strong nation or a strong Government to model themselves on a few violent women who feel themselves outraged by persistent injustice and repeated betrayal. White washing of officials by officials will not give satisfaction. It is not a permanent process. Following the lead of President Wilson let us rather say "The great thing to do is the only thing we can do."

Wm Thomson