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By Root 3903 0

through the chains. Discovering that if they walked on the pavements they could be arrested for obstruction, they took to walking with their placards in the gutters at the edge of the roadway where the police were powerless to stop them. When some of their more enthusiastic members had broken windows because the government refused to see their deputations, they were arrested. When they went on hunger strike in prison, many people thought it unjustified. But when there were well-documented reports of policemen assaulting and even beating demonstrating women, and of brutal force-feeding in jails, there was public disquiet. It was not just publicity that the movement had achieved. A detailed plan for moderate legislation had been prepared and a truce on all illegal acts had been called while the government considered it.

But above all, the years had brought supporters. With their headquarters in the Strand and their own publishing house, the Women’s Press in Charing Cross Road, the movement was now large and professional. All over the country, affiliated organizations had sprung up. And today, symbolically marking the start of the new reign, the movement was going to demonstrate to all the world that it had come of age.

“Come on,” her mother said with a smile. “We march together.” Helen felt great pride as they set off together for Sloane Square underground station.

Lying immediately west of the walled grounds of Buckingham Palace and just below Knightsbridge at the eastern end of Hyde Park, Belgravia which belonged to the rich Grosvenor family, had been developed by Cubitt into a series of streets and squares of white stucco houses. Architecturally undistinguished, they were large, grand and expensive. The grandest of all was Belgrave Square. Then, running westward, the long rectangle of Eaton Square with the more modest Eaton Terrace, to which Violet had moved after Colonel Meredith’s death, at its western end. Sloane Square, which marked the border between Belgravia and the start of Chelsea, lay only a short walk away, and contained an underground station.

As the two Suffragettes walked through this fashionable quarter some of the other inhabitants looked at them with disapproval. Helen had never experienced such a thing herself.

“People are glaring at us,” she whispered to her mother. She never forgot her mother’s reply.

“Really?” Violet smiled airily. “Well I don’t mind. Do you?”

To Helen this seemed so free, so wonderful and so funny that she burst out laughing.

“I think that they all look terribly silly,” said Violet gaily as they entered the underground.

The procession, when they emerged on the far side of Westminster, was like nothing Helen had ever seen in her life. The Suffragettes had learned that the way to disarm criticism that they were unwomanly was to dress with great care. The women, in their tens of thousands, were all wearing long dresses, mostly white, and could have been taken for matrons, or their daughters, from the strictest days of republican Rome. The only exception was the figure riding a horse near the front and dressed as Joan of Arc, whom the movement had adopted as their own saint. There were deputations and floats not only from all over England but from Scotland, Wales, and even India and other parts of the empire. The whole procession was four miles long. It would wind its way from the City, past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, and on to Hyde Park and the great rally – tickets all sold out long ago – in the Royal Albert Hall.

“And remember,” her mother told her, before the huge procession moved off, “our cause is just. You must be prepared to fight for a noble cause, Helen, my child. We are marching for our country, and for a better future.”

Although she never forgot these words, nor the amazing sight of thousands of women with their white dresses and sashes and banners, it was the extraordinary sense of marching that the girl remembered. Marching in unison, marching for a cause, marching side by side with her mother, into the new world.

There were other signs in these years