Battling for Votes

100 years ago when women battle to win the vote in the UK, this place

was on the front line. Campaigners known as suffragists had been

fighting for decades to secure the vote, but to no avail. So one group

decided to take direct action. The women's social and political union

led by Emily Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel. Some of the

women they inspired recalls those times for BBC documentary in 1968.

About the only thing is a girl could do would be to become a nurse or

governess. I was an art student. In South Kensington art school and

enjoyed the art very much. What I was really interested in was

changing social conditions and I realised they could not be done

until women have the vote. I was very annoyed about the position, the

difference between a boy and girl. Everybody wanted a boy. It's a boy

and all of that. It irritated me enormously. When one grew up and saw

the differences and opportunities boy 's and men had and women and

girls had, that increase that feeling. To publicise their cause,

the women staged demonstrations, smash windows, chained themselves to

railings. The Daily Mail called them the suffragettes, a term of abuse

that later came to define the campaign. A woman went to work, a

husband out of work, he could come outside the factory take our money

and spend it and she could not do anything. I was just gone 30. They

said there is a suffragette around the corner, speaking and I went

around the corner and thought to myself, this woman is talking sense.

When I joined I happened to meet an open-air meeting and heard the

Speaker said lunatics, criminals, paupers and women may not vote.

Well, I had not joined before them, but my instincts had been that way

but I joined and I was in the parade in almost no time after that. There

was tremendous force around is for good and some people could not take

it. I remember going on poster parades.

They were charming within in it. They absolutely were smothered with

eggs, rotten tomatoes, and you never saw anything like what we looks like

at the end. The Palace of west and stir was the place of symbolism for

the suffragettes. They had been denied the vote and would take their

fight to Parliament. Women would just come into Parliament, as

everybody was allowed, and ask to see an MP and would be shown into

central lobby. While they were waiting, they would often leap up

onto the seats and shout, votes for women, and blew whistles. It got to

such a state that women were banned from central lobby altogether. By

1908 their rallies attracted huge numbers but the Liberal government

led by Asquith was unmoved. That October the suffragettes plans to

rush Parliament. There had been a demonstration, one quarter of a

million gathered, and nobody would do anything and we still had no

movement on the right to vote. They decided to organise the rush on

Parliament. We think 60,000 were on the rush. It has been commemorated

recently, the environmental movement decided to repeat the rush that had

a climate change rush on Parliament, so a precedent for continuing

campaigns. Some managed to break through police lines at one made it

onto the floor of the Commons chamber. Pankhurst was jailed for

her part in inciting the rush. On her release, colleagues awarded her

this medal. It is now owned by the Commons and is the centrepiece of a

display by central lobby. Having the exhibition in the heart of the

Houses of Parliament is important. This is the place the public can

come and we can talk to people about the importance of the right to vote

and what women and others went through to get the right and to

encourage them to exercise that right democratically. Very

important. In November 1910, suffragettes again tried to rush

Parliament, but were forced back by police. The violence of the day

caused the women to name Black Friday. The Black Friday deputation

was the most extraordinary thing and most seem to be unable to remember.

The treatment we received. I was arrested twice on Black Friday. I

cannot remember one time at all. The other time, I remember we were

smashed against a wall and arrested. Some people had the most ghastly

treatment. Having been banned from central lobby the suffragettes

turned their attention to the main hall.

In May 1909 a group of people entered St Stephens and the men and

so to see their men burst of Parliament but the woman waited on

the seats of St Stephens. After a few minutes they all jumped up and

they had padlocks and chains head on about their clothing and the chained

themselves to four of the statues as a protest and started to blow

whistles, it was to advertise a forthcoming suffragette rally. A

statue was slightly damaged and the spire from his boot was not find you

can see it is still missing. One of the regular protesters at Parliament

was Emily Davidson. She hid in this broom cupboard in the Palace of

Westminster on the ninth of the 1911 census so when Arthur Road race she

could reply the House of Commons. Two years later she died when she

was hit by the Kings horse at the derby while testing. The scarf she

was wearing that day as long to the exhibition. Whether direct action

proved more decisive than campaigning is debatable. I would

have thought there were a mix of issues in the campaign was also

connected with the campaign for working rights for women so you have

old range of different things going on but undoubtedly the militant

action also played its part and I have to say I do not know whether I

would have been as brave as they work. It is hard to put yourself

back in that position but I wonder what I would have done. I hope I

would have been on the demonstration. Whether I would have

trained myself to the railings, throwing stones, been on hunger

strike, I am not sure. Public pressure grew as suffragettes were

force-fed to prevent them hunger striking, a hugely unpopular policy,

but the turning point would be the First World War. The women's world

effort was recognised. In 1980 women over 30 were given the right to

vote. They finally got the vote at the same age as men in 1928. 50

years of careful negotiation to get a vote. At the finish it was the

1914 war and all the agitation from that brought the vote. Emily

Pankhurst died a month before the 1928 act became law. This statue to

her was unveiled two years later and stands in Victoria gardens close to

the parliament she fought so hard to influence.

The Palace of Westminster with its many stone figures as the ultimate

Gothic revival building. It was a genius who got the design to created

this visual feast of stonework paraphernalia we see today. There

are gargoyles, angels and lions in all manner of hideous creatures

watching over you from every corner. While most gargoyles might be

grotesque or grotesques are not gargoyles. If it acts as a drain

pipe and expels water from a building then it is a gargoyle. All

other such carved creatures no matter how scary they might be are

called grotesques. Road Tesco faces, mixtures of body parts morphed into

all kinds of strange creatures such as Britons and other dragon is

forums, are in abundance on the Palace of Westminster. They seem

confused with their surroundings and pretend to threaten but do not harm.

Gargoyles have been around for thousands of years. This would be

the chance for the stonemason to indulge in his craft, often

incorporating his own features or likeness within the sculpture. In

the 12th Century gargoyles for started to appear in Europe and most

of the population at this time were elected at Sully at his borough

power for way of conveying ideas. Lions appear frequently throughout

the Palace, a symbol of pride with links to royalty and honour. Dogs

can the faithfulness, loyalty and intelligence and the eagle portrays

respect and the ability to see violence in the distance in a

protective watchman like way. The more you looks the more you see the

hidden treasure within the walls in the arches of this fascinating

building. A fantastic display of crouched forms secretly and silently

watching over you. Whitehall, the heart of government,

do you think you could handle the police, security services,

counter-terrorism and once upon a time presence? So you want to be

Home Secretary. Good news does not travel across the Home Secretary's

desk. It is extremely hard work. It is often not appreciated outside.

You go to bed at night and everything is calm and under control

and do our work on at 2am and some disastrous event has taken place,

you know nothing about it, it has nothing to do with you, but in the

morning everybody is going to be out for your blood saying it is your

fault. Jill Rutter was a senior civil servant and is now at the

Institute for Government and of all Whitehall jobs she thinks this one

is the tough one. The Home Office used to be a political graveyard.

Responsibility for prisons which it has lost but still in charge of

things like counter-terrorism, police, immigration, where the big

question is what will go wrong? Home Secretary knows that something will

go wrong somewhere in one of those areas, they do not know what or

when. So one of the key attributes of being Home Secretary is to be

able to manage those risks, the act calmly and not be panicked by

headlines into bad legislation and things like that. That level of

responsibility can be daunting. Even the Prime Minister Gordon Brown

started the conversation by saying Jackie, I expect this will be a

shock to you. He was right, it was. I managed to avoid the F word that

Margaret Beckett used when asked to be Home Secretary but I think

something unguarded came out of my mouth. It was a shock. I had asked

if at all possible for a different job. It is a prize in one of the

things that makes the job a talented department itself. Kenneth Baker who

was one of my predecessors and the friend said to me shortly before the

97 election, Jack, good luck as Home Secretary, remember... You always

felt there was some person who worked under the State Department

whose name you did not know, whose responsibilities you had no idea of,

who was going to destroy your carrier. That is probably pretty

accurate. Because in any big organisation things go wrong and you

do not miss a thoroughly know about them until they go wrong and then

the buck stops at the Secretary of State. This personal responsibility

combines with the seriousness of the issue into quite a bruising mix.

Everybody makes mistakes. Every minister makes mistakes. We are all

fallible human beings. If you are in another department that is quite a

reasonable chance that the mistake you make will be in some dark hidden

corner where no one is looking. There are no dark hidden corners in

the Home Office. When I was told I had to release a prisoner because he

was convicted of an offence which did not exist because I had failed

to have that offence renewed in the prevention of terrorism temporary

provisions order and what had happened was an official had left of

something from the list, I go to the House of Commons and explain that

someone who is plainly guilty is going to be released, and I am to

blame. It is complete incompetence. You have to accept these things.

Managing the internal structure and culture of the Home Office as part

of the job. There were obvious times when what I wanted to do was a shock

to the system within the department, which was used to saying I do not

think Home Secretary we really can do anything about this, this is

outside the scope of what is possible, and I never accepted that.

There were occasions when press officers, when journalists would

phone the press office to ask what the Home Office line was on whatever

it was and they would be told, the Home Office line is ABC but the Home

Secretary... That took quite a lot of dealing with. On top of trying to

push your own agenda there is the constant intrusion of crises. The

day I arrived it was a beautiful clear day, sunlight day, and the

permanent secretary Richard Wilson said to me, what can you see? I said

blue sky. He said that is very dangerous, at any moment an Exocet

that you cannot see will come through the sky and land wrecked

their and it will explode unless you are very careful. That can happen on

day one. Jacqui Smith at the handle a terrorist attack on Glasgow

Airport and be judged on how to -- how she coped. That was a certain

element of that which was good grief she did not come running screaming

out of Downing Street, she held it together. I was going to hold it

together because I was well well believed, confident, experienced.

That probably did some good in overcoming people's apprehensions

about whether I was going to be able to manage it. The thing that came

out of the blue was the advisory Council on the misuse of drugs and

the sacking of Professor Nutt. If anyone remembers anything about my

time in office they remember that and I still get not exactly fan

mail, the opposite of fan mail, about that. That came up bit of the

clear, out of a clear blue sky. Charles God did not believe in the

department for handling crises. He wanted to change things. I thought

that just about all crises, perhaps not the intruder in the Queen's

bedroom, but just about every other crisis is probably speaking

predictable in general if not predictable specifically. I thought

we could pretend preventative strategies and that is how I saw my

role. Trying to focus on your political agenda on the one hand and

fend off prices on the other is not easy. It is like being in a ship

knowing your destination and having it vaguely insight but in the middle

of the Tempest, a storm, and wins buffeting you one way and the other

everyday and trying to deal with them while at the same time reaching

your destination. The only caveat is that the destination keeps moving

away. Being such an all-consuming job is perhaps why so few Home

Secretary is going be Prime Minister. You ignore the skills and

nuances you need to move upwards. I suppose I was so obsessed with

changing things and getting things done. It was a really challenging

demanding task. I probably did not devote enough time and energy to the

presentation. It is often the frustration at Number 10 that they

feel the people who are at the departmental heads go native and

stop thinking about the broad politics and start thinking about

the actual job itself and that was probably a criticism that could be

made of me as well and that aspect was always with me. The politics of

the moment not always and in some way is I regret that. Isn't it an

irony that one of Whitehall's covers jobs for the seep of giving us save

the Home Secretary is worst of protecting themselves?