An issue that has been in and out of the news for the last eighteen months is how the courts should deal with men and women who have committed offences in the course of political protests.

The question has been whether the fact that their offences spring from sincerely held political views can mitigate the punishment they will receive for crimes committed when going beyond the limits of peaceful protest.

I expect that the question will continue to figure large in cases still to come to trial in the event that there are convictions so I am not going to be so bold as to suggest there is a definitive answer.

I will say though that it is definitely not a case of ‘one size fits all’ when it comes sentencing people convicted of public order offences after political protests.

Judges and magistrates may be keen to emphasize the need for general deterrence when sentencing in these cases but the defendants are individuals and consideration therefore needs to be given to their individual circumstances, such as their youth, background and character.

The reason why they broke the law and now stand convicted of an offence before the court is also something that should be taken into account. In years to come, the motive for offending may be the most important thing about the case.

The news in April that a statue of Millicent Fawcett, a campaigner for women’s voting rights, had been unveiled in London’s Parliament Square set me thinking about how courts have handled similar cases involving political issues in the past. The statue was erected at this spot to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of women getting the right to vote.

In the first decade of the last century the big domestic political issue in the United Kingdom, apart from Home Rule for Ireland, was votes for women. There had been an organized suffragist movement since the 1880’s but in1897 it became more organized and vocal with the establishment of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) by Millicent Fawcett.

A few years later, in 1903, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was founded by the Pankhurst sisters, Christabel and Sylvia, and their mother, Emmeline.

This was an offshoot of the NUWSS and catered for those women who believed that the campaign for women’s voting rights should be more assertive and its activities should involve breaking the law.

WSPU members, called suffragettes to distinguish them from peaceable suffragists, were extreme militants. They committed arson, criminal damage, assaults, and a host of public order offences.

They burned down an unoccupied dwelling belonging to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the home of another Member of Parliament. They destroyed a greenhouse at Kew Gardens. One member threw an axe at the Prime Minister and another took a meat cleaver to a painting by Velasquez in the National Gallery.

They set off a small bomb in Westminster Abbey near the Coronation Throne. They were responsible for the first political bombing in Ireland in the twentieth century, not the IRA, when they set off an explosive device in Lisburn Cathedral just days before World War I started in August 1914.

Three hundred of them invaded Parliament in 1910 when it was in session and disrupted proceedings. They held large scale assemblies in cities across the country and fought repeatedly with policemen when they tried to restrain them. They were responsible for many acts of vandalism, such as sprinkling acid on golf course greens, cutting telegraph wires, breaking windows and setting fire to sports pavilions and post boxes.

Their activities were as potentially lethal as any of the activities undertaken by the agitators in the 1967 disturbances in Hong Kong which involved many deaths. By a miracle, the only sure fatality to come out of the fight for votes for women was a suffragette named Emily Davidson. She attempted to stop King George V’s horse when racing in the 1911 Epsom Derby and was trampled underfoot and died from head injuries.

How did the courts treat these militant suffragettes who were not content to march in peaceful protest like their sisters in the NUWSS wearing white frocks and sashes and carrying placards saying ‘Votes for Women’?

Most suffragettes that came before the courts had been convicted of criminal damage or for offences of public disorder. Judges and magistrates were disposed to pass short prison sentences of measured in weeks or months and rarely in years.

This leniency was in part due to the fact that the political parties in Parliament had accepted that women should have the vote. The only problem was the timing of the introduction of the necessary legislation, with rival parties trying to figure out what date would confer the best party electoral advantage. There was stalemate on this issue which caused immense frustration.

Magistrates were also uncomfortable with jailing women, many of whom were middle-class and well-educated and who had families, who were obviously committed to a political principle that was plainly worth fighting for.

The suffragettes who were imprisoned for a relatively short time deliberately made life difficult for their gaolers by refusing food. The prison authorities resorted to force- feeding them. This was a painful experience for the prisoner and made for an unedifying spectacle that was distasteful to the prison officers who had to carry out the forcible feeds .

Legislation was enacted to permit the temporary release of suffragettes who refused to eat to avoid warders force feeding them. The public showed some sympathy to the suffragettes when they were re-arrested in order that they could continue with their sentences. Inevitably, the re-arrested suffragettes would refuse food again so they were released again after a few days.

It seemed that the authorities were playing cynically with convicted suffragettes through repeated releases and re-imprisonments and the 1913 Act of Parliament that provided for the revolving doors in prisons was popularly called the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’.

One case that shows the difficulties in dealing with militants who defied the law on grounds of sincerely held political belief was the trial of Emmeline Pankhurst and barrister Frederick Pethick-Lawrence and his wife, also called Emmeline, at the Central Criminal Court in 1912. They were charged with conspiracy and inciting others to commit criminal damage by breaking the windows of many central London shops in 1911.

The defendants did not seriously contest the charges but they caused the prosecution to call over one hundred witnesses partly in order to establish that the government of the day had gone back on its promise to introduce legislation giving women the vote.

After a six day trial, the defendants were convicted and sentenced to nine months imprisonment. What is remarkable perhaps to the reader today is that the jury added a rider to the verdict.

“The jury unanimously desire to express the hope that, taking into consideration the undoubtedly pure motives that underlay the agitation which has led to these troubles, you will be pleased to exercise the utmost clemency in dealing with the case."

The judge thought that there was something in the jury’s rider but also recognized that he was dealing with individuals who were bound to re-offend so long as women were denied the vote.

“You have been convicted of crimes for which the law would sanction, if I chose to impose it, a sentence of two years' imprisonment with hard labour. There are circumstances connected with your case which the jury have very properly brought to my attention, and I have been asked by you all three to treat you as first-class misdemeanants.

If in the course of this case I had observed any contrition for or disavowal of the acts you have committed, or any hope that you would avoid a repetition of them in future, I should have been very much prevailed upon by the arguments that have been addressed to me.

But as you say openly that you mean to continue the breaking of the law, to make you first-class misdemeanants would only be to put into your hands fresh capacities for executing that purpose.

The sentence of the Court upon each of you is that you be imprisoned for nine months in the second division, and as the Crown has been placed to great expense, and private citizens have had their property gravely damaged by your hands, as to you Frederick Pethick Lawrence and Emmeline Pankhurst, I make the further order that you jointly and severally pay the costs of the prosecution in the case.”

(The judge’s reference to first and second class misdemeanant is a reference to the classification of convicted prisoners at the time. A judge could order that a convicted person be treated as a first class misdemeanant and he or she would not have their hair cut, would not be obliged to wear prison clothing and could enjoy a more relaxed regime.)

Frederick Pethick Lawrence could not afford to pay the costs order and bailiffs seized his property for public auction. Members of the public bought his household effects at auction and then returned them to him as a gift.

The criminal acts of the suffragettes stopped with outbreak of war in 1914 as the leaders of the movements for votes for women agreed to put on hold campaigning for the duration of hostilities.

Many women filled job vacancies caused by men volunteering to fight and, in so doing, demonstrated beyond doubt that they possessed all the qualities that men with the right to vote had. The franchise was eventually given to them by the Representation of the People Act 1918.

And so it was that, despite the violence and acts of public disorder, militant disruptive action was eventually rewarded.

Many of those convicted of offences became figures in public life. Emmeline Pankhurst joined the Conservative Party and stood for Parliament; her suffragette daughter, Christabel, became a Dame and Emmeline’s co-defendant, Frederick Pethick Lawrence, became a Labour M.P., a Privy Councillor, a baron and later a cabinet minister as Secretary of State for India and Burma. His wife was also active in the Labour Party.

Emmeline Pankhurst’s statue was unveiled in 1930 by the then Prime Minister in gardens close to Parliament. A commemorative plaque for her daughter Christabel was added in 1958 and the Lord Chancellor, the top judicial figure in the country, unveiled the memorial.

All this goes to show that if history is with you, criminal offences will be forgotten and will be no bar to advancement in public life. In fact, a spell behind bars is a positive thing to have behind you when seeking to get on in life after the political tide has turned.

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About the author
Philip Dykes is a Senior Counsel. He has lived in Hong Kong for over thirty years. His interests are in literature, language, history, fine art and photography. He worked as government lawyer until 1992 and he is now in private practice.

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