Three Dangerous Women
Matriarchy versus Patriarchy (16)
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst are the most widely known Suffragettes and this is hardly surprising as they were elitist, supported Britain’s role in World War One and sent so many young men to their deaths. Emmeline campaigned to give unlisted men white feathers, symbolizing cowardice and betrayal of their duty. So the State honours the memory of those betrayers of freedom who endorsed its murderous plans.
Whatever Matriarchy is (and defining it is a moving target) it certainly is not an endorsement of one of the most evil patriarchies of all time: the British Empire.
So it’s worth focussing on three great Matriarchs who are barely known today and whom it’s most unlikely Meryl Streep will ever make a film about, such as her role as Emmeline in Suffragette. The State plays down their great achievements and would discourage any young women today fromusing them as role models. But there is much to admire about them, not least just how dangerous they were.
Sylvia Pankhurst
SYLVIA PANKHURST was strongly pacifist, a socialist, a believer in a mass women’s movement, rather than an upper-class movement, and walked her talk by setting up her base in the East End of London. She took over a pub called the Gunmaker’s Arms and renamed it The Mother’s Arms. It was a clinic for mothers and babies, a creche allowing mothers to work, and provided information on hygiene, nutrition and family planning at a time when the fanatical Bishop of London wanted to burn all condoms.
One of her greatest achievements was to publish Sassoon’s ‘A Soldier’s Declaration’ in her newspaper The Worker’s Dreadnought. The Guardian – as cowardly back then as it is today – had nothing to do with it. Today, we’re barely aware of Sassoon’s condemnation of the war – his poetry is all right because that’s most likely to appeal to the middle classes – but it had huge significance at the time. If he had been working-class, rather than a member of one of Britain’s richest families (who had made their money selling opium to China) he’d have been shot. The fact that few people know about the Soldier’s Declaration is because the State would hate any of today’s young officers to make similar statements about Britain’s role in Ireland, Afghanistan, Iraq or the impending conflicts on the horizon. So it’s unlikely to appear in school history books. It’s not an oversight. It’s conscious censorship. For Sylvia to publish, in the face of police raids on her publishing press, was truly courageous.
She was equally radical in her own personal relationships. She refused to marry but instead lived with an Italian anarchist for over thirty years and had a child with him ‘out of wedlock’. Inevitably Emmeline, who became a Tory MP, was outraged and had nothing more to do with her.
Zelie Emerson
ZELIE EMERSON was an American suffragette who helped found The Workers’ Dreadnought newspaper with Sylia Pankhurst She was a formidable woman described as Sylvia’s ‘Aggressive American aide’.
Zelie was a short, plump, very pushy American – a great character and a physical fighter who set up self-defence classes for women. She was decades ahead of her time.
On hunger strike in prison, she was forcibly fed like so many Suffragettes. But Zelie was different, because after her release, she waited for the prison doctor, captured him and whipped him for breaking his Hippocratic oath not to do his patients harm. And threatened to force-feed him, to see how he liked it. Remarkably, the doctor never pressed charges. Perhaps he was too terrified of Zelie.
I was so impressed by her, I featured her in my forthcoming Ragtime Soldier – the successor to Charley’s War.
But her direct action shows why most of us have never heard of Zelie Emerson.
She’s the threat of a good example.
Just like a female factory worker in World War One who threw her dead brother’s medal at visiting royalty. She was beaten up by police for it, but her courageous deed is still remembered today. Zelie demonstrates that if the State criminally exceeds its powers there will be punishment for the people who carry out its crimes.
The Patriarchy will be resisted.
Alice Wheeldon
ALICE WHEELDON is another great unsung Great War heroine and suffragette. She was barely acknowledged in the media, apart from (if I recall correctly) a gently sneering interview with a Wheeldon relative by Jeremy Paxman during the war centenary years. Alice was a formidable working-class matriarch who ran a second hand clothes shop in Derby. She also ran an escape line for deserters, pacifists and other conscientious objectors. They were known as the Flying Corps. World War Two war resisters in Belgium and France who ran secret escape lines are romanticised in popular fiction and films such as the TV show Secret Army. But there’s not a hell’s chance that the Secret Army of Britain’s story will ever be told.
MPs would go crazy. They would believe that it was a young man’s duty to die in the trenches, to sacrifice their lives for the State, and that those who chose to bail were cowards. And sheeple would believe them. That’s how propagandized we are. Even though many at the time – like Alice – felt very differently. But we’ll never hear their story. Thus, my grandfather was a policeman, probably at the port of Harwich, and hated arresting deserters, probably because he knew these frightened young men would face torture or the firing squad. So he became an army cook and served in the trenches himself for the duration.
Alice’s Secret Army was such a threat to the State that they infiltrated her group with a secret service agent called Alex Gordon. He claimed she was planning to assassinate Prime Minister Lloyd George by throwing a poison dart at him while he was playing golf. Her trial was at the Old Bailey and this incredible woman refused to swear on the Bible, and spoke defiantly, so she was damned. Evidence given in the case against her appears to have been fabricated on behalf of “a government eager to disgrace the anti-war movement.”
Found guilty and imprisoned, Alice went on hunger strike and was eventually released, her health broken. A common State technique used back then and even today, with Julian Assange. She died soon after her release.
A member of her Secret Army, John S. Clarke, wrote of the MI5 secret agent Alex Gordon:
Epitaph on Alex Gordon
Agent Provocateur of the British Government
During the Great War to save democracy
Stop! Stranger, thou art near the spot,
Marked by this cross metallic
Where buried deep doth lie and rot
The corpse of filthy Alex
And maggot worms in swarms below,
Compete with one another
In shedding tears of bitter woe
To mourn – not eat – a brother.
But is the Patriarchy these women fought against really that bad today?
Unequivocally, yes.
There are so many examples. Today, thousands of nuns across the world – on every continent – are used as prostitutes by Catholic priests. A high percentage are forced to have abortions to ‘protect the good name of the Church’ which must always come first. 32 out of 50 nuns in an African community had to have abortions because they were impregnated by Catholic priests. The story broke in 2019 with a major French film documentary. (There seems to be a tech problem with Episode One.) I found only Episode Two worked. But that tells you all you need to know. The Vatican didn’t deny it, it wrung its hands and the Pope did… nothing. That’s still the position today. The rapes of these obedient sex slaves, dutiful daughters of the Church, continues.
It’s why we need to revere and have role models like Sylvia Pankhurst, Zelie Emerson and Alice Wheeldon. They wouldn’t put up with that shit and one way or another the priests responsible would be dealt with. To make them afraid, as Zelie Emerson made that doctor afraid, to know they will be punished, is the best way forward. Fear is all these cowardly Catholic priests understand.
So the battle between the Patriarchy and the Matriarchy continues.
But what was the original Matriarchy from Neolithic times like? Was it an improvement on the Patriarchy? It could hardly be worse. No one knows with any certainty. I’ll make a few guesses next week.