PANKHURST (EMMELINE)
Autograph album containing the signatures of Emmeline Pankhurst ('Can man be free if woman be a slave?/ (Shelley)/ E. Pankhurst') and Ramsay Macdonald ('A man's a man for a' that/ J. Ramsay Macdonald') on the same page, together with leading members of the women's suffrage and socialist movement such as Ethel Annakin Snowden ('With kindest greetings/ Ethel Annakin Snowden'), Philip Snowden ('The man of independent mind is king of men'), social reformer and suffragist Isabella O. Ford, Nellie Alma Martel, Arthur Henderson, John J. Macpherson, John Hodge and others, c.68 leaves (34 blank), red calf gilt, worn, upper cover calf detached, loss to spine, small 8vo (100 x 160mm.), [c.1905-1906]
Footnotes:
'CAN MAN BE FREE IF WOMAN BE A SLAVE?': Album containing signatures of leading members of the women's suffrage, trade union and labour movements in Manchester collected by the daughter of Labour M.P. John Hodge.

There is no ownership inscription in the album but internal evidence suggests it is likely to have belonged to Margaret Hodge, eldest daughter of Labour M.P. John Hodge (1855-1937). Hodge was an active supporter of the women's franchise movement and knew the leading lights of the WSPU in Manchester including the Pankhursts and Isabella Ford. In 1903 a deputation asked him him to introduce a women's franchise bill in parliament if he was successfully elected (see Reid, C. The Origins & Development of the Independent Labour Party in Manchester and Salford, 1880-1914, 1981, doctoral thesis online). Margaret's father's political connections would thus explain how she had access to the influential names represented here and she is known to have accompanied him to meetings, including to hear Churchill speak in July 1904 (Reid, p.907). According to the census, Margaret was 15 years old in 1901 and would therefore be around 20 or 21 when the book was signed, shortly after her father was elected M.P.

Among the names gathered here are, notably, Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the Women's Social and Political Union, who shares a page with future Prime Minister and then Secretary of the Labour Party Ramsay Macdonald, Ethel Snowden, a leading campaigner for women's suffrage and her husband Philip, the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer. Also included is Isabella Ormston Ford who was the first woman to speak at a Labour Representation Committee conference in 1903. The entries by the Snowdens and Isabella Ford are dated 20 February 1906, just five days after the Labour Representation Committee formally decided to adopt the name 'The Labour Party', and the day after the first march on the Commons organised by the WSPU and seen by Emmeline Pankhurst as the real beginning of the militant women's suffrage movement.
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