This campaign of ‘outrages’ created severe strains within the suffragette movement. Emmeline Pankhurst tried to quell them by cancelling the annual meeting of the Women’s Social and Political Union, denying members the right to object, and concentrating all decision-making processes in a small coterie she gathered round her, which included her daughter Christabel. Democracy was beside the point, she said: the suffragettes were ‘an army in the field’.
