Deeds Not Words Transcript (Scotland: A Scottish History Podcast)
Note: Scotland is produced and designed to be heard, not read. We encourage you, if you are able, to listen to the audio, which provides insight which is significantly different to how it appears on the page. Transcripts are generated from the original scripts of the episodes. They may be slightly different to the corresponding audio and may contain errors.
Scotland - A Scottish History Podcast
Episode 52 - Deeds Not Words
MICHAEL PARK: It is 9th March 1914. You’ve been fighting for the vote for years now and for every step you take forward you seem to be forced back two or three by the truncheons of the police.
Today you’re on your way to St. Andrew’s Hall in Glasgow, at the rear of the Mitchell Library. As you walk past the domed building, the new home of learning for the people of Glasgow, you start to notice the police.
They’re everywhere.
This is Scotland, a podcast about history and where we made it. I’m Michael Park.
Every meeting of the ‘guid cause’ as they’re known here, or the Suffragettes as they’re known across the country attracts the intense interest of the police.
And today’s event is no different. You’re going to hear the General speak. Bedecked in a military style uniform with epaulettes and everything, Flora Drummond is an inspiring speaker.
In the room at the St Andrew’s Hall she is greeted by rapturous applause by hundreds of women in purple, green and white rosettes and sashes. Members and sympathisers of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
But they’re not the only ones. Many men sympathetic to the cause are in the room, while some skeptics have turned up to heckle the speakers.
They always did.
The General is not only an expert at putting down hecklers, she’s a militant, and so are the thirty women who flank her on the stage, and many others in the room. They have done things that have upset the establishment and put the fear of god into the men of parliament.
In Scotland alone the stand at Ayr Racecourse has been burned to the ground, and they tried similar at Kelso. There was a bomb planted at the Botanic Gardens in Glasgow as well as countless smaller acts of vandalism.
The police might tell you that this is why they’re hanging around the Hall in their numbers.
But it isn’t.
They’ve heard the rumours too.
Everyone in the room has heard the rumours.
Emmeline Pankhurst is in the building.
The General and the WSPU bodyguard - everyone knows who the women flanking her are - don’t look too dangerous among the bouquets of flowers that line the stage and rest on every table in the room.
But then Mrs Pankhurst is announced and begins to make her way to the stage to speak.
Everything seems to slow down as she mounts the stairs.
The doors at the back of the room burst on their hinges as what feels like every policeman in Glasgow begins to surge into the room.
Pankhurst is a wanted woman - warranted under the cat and mouse act which allowed authorities to release hunger striking suffragettes and then rearrest them when they were healthy again.
The leader of the WSPU wasn’t the only person in the room with a warrant for her arrest.
One of the bodyguards on the stage - you recognise you think - Janie something - pulls a pistol and aims it at the first policeman into the room. The shot cracks in the air.
Time stops.
The policeman begins to collapse back into the doorway, taking some of his colleagues with him. He believes that he’s been shot. He hasn’t - the gun was loaded with blanks.
And then it’s all happening around you as the police start grabbing at any woman they can get their hands on as the women on the podium leap into action. Almost as vignettes you see them produce clubs from the inside of their sensible tweed jackets and fly forward into the faces of the police.
A few flank Mrs Pankhurst.
The rest do something you’ve never seen before. They grab the policemen by the collars and send them flying. As the police raise their truncheons and force their arms down at the women, they use their own force against them and send them flying into the flowers.
Men are flipping and flying left and right, into bouquets of purple, green and white, with glinting metal hidden within. These bouquets are laden with hidden barbed wire.
You suppose that explains the wailing from the officers who have landed in the middle.
The suffragette bodyguard have been learning jiu-jitsu for years in an attempt to counter the force of the police truncheons which have rained down on them since they began to take direct action.
The police are battered and bruised, many of them gain some permanent scars which they’ll probably lie about later in life, but Emmeline Pankhurst is arrested.
She is dragged from the meeting to boos and jeers from the crowd who weren’t involved in the dust up. But the meeting continues - it’s a legal meeting after all and the police have got their woman.
But Emmeline Pankhurst has her moment of martyrdom.
EMMELINE PANKHURST: Whatever happens will hit the Government. If I get away they will again be laughed at, and if I am taken the people will be roused. The fools hurt themselves every time.
MICHAEL PARK: After the meeting a growing crowd of nearly 4,000 march on the police station where Pankhurst is being held, demanding her release and chanting the slogans of the WSPU.
SUFFRAGETTES: DEEDS NOT WORDS! VOTES FOR WOMEN! DEEDS NOT WORDS! VOTES FOR WOMEN! DEEDS NOT WORDS! VOTES FOR WOMEN! DEEDS NOT WORDS! VOTES FOR WOMEN! DEEDS NOT WORDS! VOTES FOR WOMEN! DEEDS NOT WORDS! VOTES FOR WOMEN!
MICHAEL PARK: The tide is turning. Change is coming.
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You’ve been listening to Scotland, it was written and produced by me, Michael Park and is a production of Be Quiet Media.
The music for every episode of Scotland is by a human coil of barbed wire, Mitch Bain, you can check out more of his work at mitchbain.bequiet.media.
Jamie Mowat does stunning illustrations for us which you can check out in our episode art. See more and buy prints at tidlin - t i d l i n - .com.
Scotland is supported by Chris Lingwood and listeners like you on Patreon. You can get loads more from us for as little as two dollars a month at: patreon.com/scotlandhistorypodcast
You can find out more about the show and read transcripts on our website, scotlandpodcast.net and on twitter, facebook and instagram by searching Scotland - A Scottish History Podcast.
Thanks for listening. Look after each other. Wear a mask. We’ll see you next time.