Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/161

 The new Prime Minister, Mr Asquith, declined to receive a deputation from this body of women, whereupon began the series of deputations to the House, witnessed by tens of thousands of people, in which the women came into conflict with the police, and by them and the mob suffered the rudest violence. Hundreds have been imprisoned for refusing to obey the police. Attempts to treat them as common criminals have been steadily resisted from the first, and to gain the first-class treatment, granted to certain male political prisoners, the women adopted the hunger-strike, which a baffled Government met with the filthy practice of forcible-feeding.

The reversal of the early policy of the Union, and the substitution of a policy of attack upon property, both Government property and that of private citizens, was made in 1911, when Mr Asquith's proposal to enfranchise more men whilst ignoring the long-standing claims of the women was made. It was felt by thousands of women that no more might reliance be placed upon the fairmindedness and the honour of politicians, ever ready to promise, but willing always to break the spirit, if not the letter, of their promises to women. The Prime Minister engaged to accept a woman suffrage amendment to the promised Reform Bill, if carried by the Commons, and to make it an integral