| Description | Leaflet setting out the programme for the evening - 'The March of the Women' and 'The Women's Marseillaise' feature. Annie Kenney is to be in the Chair and the Speakers to be George Lansbury and Georgina Brackenbury. It was to be noted that 'The Special Cinematograph Performance has been abandoned owing to the difficulties that have arisen at the last moment.' In fact, this was a very difficult time for the WSPU - Annie Kenney did not, in fact, appear - having been arrested. Gen. Drummond took her place. It had originally been intended for Mrs Pankhurst to chair the meeting but she, too, was under arrest ; the back page of the leaflet mentions that various publications and photographs of Mrs Pankhurst would be for sale at the meeting. The WSPU claimed to have raised £15,000 at the meeting but it was the last that they could hold in the Royal Albert Hall, after this the WSPU was banned. The fact that the WSPU was being harried by the police and was finding it difficult to get a printer to produce their paper, 'The Suffragette', may account for the fact that the ink used for this leaflet, printed in purple on white paper - headed by Sylvia Pankhurst's design, in purple, white and green of the woman sower - is very faded. It is not that it looks faded by the sun, but rather that insufficient ink was used. Anyway, it seems to me that the production may have been a casualty of the situation - although the printer, Geo Barber of Furnival Street, Holborn, was well respected. |