On this day on 26th August

On this day in 1904 footballer Joe Hulme was born in Stafford. He played local football before joining York City in 1922. He scored 3 goals in 31 games for the Third Division side before moving to Blackburn Rovers in February 1924 for £250.

Hulme soon established himself in the First Division side and developed a reputation as being the fastest player in the Football League. In his first full season at the club, Blackburn finished in 16th place.

In February 1926 Herbert Chapman, the Arsenal manager, purchased Joe Hulme for £3,500. He joined a team that included as David Jack, Jimmy Brain, Jack Lambert, Bob John, Jack Butler, Andy Neil, Jimmy Ramsey, Billy Blyth, Cliff Bastin, Herbert Roberts, Alf Baker and Tom Parker.

Joe Hulme made his debut against Leeds United on 6th February 1926. He was an immediate success. As Jeff Harris has pointed out in his book, Arsenal Who's Who: "By the end of the first season Hulme's startling pace had become his trade mark, his main trick being to push the ball past the opposing full-back then tear past him as if he never existed."

In the 1925-26 season Arsenal finished in second-place to Huddersfield Town. Top scorer was Jimmy Brain who established a new club record with 33 goals. Brain's partner, Charlie Buchan, scored 21 goals that season. Many of these goals had been created by Joe Hulme.

Henry Norris refused to allow Herbert Chapman to spend much money to strengthen his team and in the 1926-27 season Arsenal finished in 11th position. However, they did enjoy a good run in the FA Cup. They beat Port Vale (0-1), Liverpool (2-0), Wolverhampton Wanderers (1-0) and Southampton (2-1) to reach the final at Wembley against Cardiff City. Arsenal lost the game 1-0.

Joe Hulme won his first international cap for England against Scotland on 2nd April 1927. England won the game 2-1. Hulme retained his place in the team and that year played against Belgium (9-1), France (6-0), Northern Ireland (0-2) and Wales (1-2). Other members of the England team that year included Dixie Dean, Tom Cooper, Stanley Earle, Edward Hufton and Alf Baker.

In October 1927, Herbert Chapman signed Eddie Hapgood, a 19 year old milkman, who was playing for non-league Kettering Town for a fee of £750. This was followed by the purchase of David Jack (£10,000), Cliff Bastin (£2,000) and Alex James (£8,750).

In the 1929-30 season Arsenal finished in 14th place in the First Division. They did much better in the FA Cup. Arsenal beat Birmingham City (1-0), Middlesbrough (2-0), West Ham United (3-0) and Hull City (1-0) to reach the final against Chapman's old club, Huddersfield Town. Arsenal won the game 2-0 with goals from Alex James and Jack Lambert and Hulme had his first cup winners' medal.

The following season Arsenal won their first ever First Division Championship with a record 66 points. The Gunners only lost four games that season. Jack Lambert was top-scorer with 38 goals. Other important players in the team included Joe Hulme, Frank Moss, Alex James, David Jack, Cliff Bastin, Eddie Hapgood, Bob John, Jimmy Brain, Tom Parker, Herbert Roberts, Alf Baker and George Male.

Alex James was injured for a large part of the 1931-32 season and this was a major factor in Arsenal losing the title by two points to Everton. Arsenal won the First Division by four points in the 1932-33 season. Cliff Bastin was the club's top scorer with 33 goals. This was the highest total ever scored by a winger in a league season. Joe Hulme contributed 20 goals. This included two hat-tricks against Sunderland and Middlesbrough.

This illustrates the effectiveness of Chapman's counter-attacking strategy. As the authors of The Official Illustrated History of Arsenal have pointed out: "In 1932-33 Bastin and Hulme scored 53 goals between them, perfect evidence that Arsenal did play the game very differently from their contemporaries, who tended to continue to rely on the wingers making goals for the centre-forward, rather than scoring themselves. By playing the wingers this way, Chapman was able to have one more man in midfield, and thus control the supply of the ball, primarily through Alex James."

Sunderland was the main challengers to Arsenal in the 1933-34 season thanks to a forward line that included Raich Carter, Patsy Gallacher, Bob Gurney and Jimmy Connor. In March 1934 Sunderland went a point ahead. However, the Gunners had games in hand and they clinched the league title with a 2-0 victory over Everton.

The following season Arsenal only finished in 6th place behind Sunderland. Arsenal did much better in the FA Cup that season. Arsenal beat Liverpool (2-0), Newcastle United (3-0), Barnsley (4-1) and Grimsby Town (1-0) to reach the final against Sheffield United. Ted Drake, who was not fully fit, scored the only goal of the final.

Some of Arsenal's key players such as Cliff Bastin, Alex James, Bob John and Herbert Roberts were past their best. Joe Hulme, Ted Drake and Ray Bowden continued to suffer from injuries, whereas Frank Moss was forced to retire from the game. Given these problems Arsenal did well to finish in 3rd place in the 1936-37 season.

In January 1938 Hulme was transferred to Huddersfield Town. During his time at Arsenal Hulme had scored 107 goals in 333 games. His last senior appearance was in the 1938 FA Cup Final against Preston North End. He therefore became the first player ever to appear in five Wembley cup finals.

During the Second World War Hulme was a reserve policeman. In February 1944 Hulme became assistant manager of Tottenham Hotspur. He became manager in October 1945. However, he did not have any success and he resigned from the post in May 1949. He then became a well-known journalist.

Joe Hulme died in September 1991.

On this day in 1920 the 19th amendment to US Constitution takes effect, giving women the right to vote.

The struggle for women's suffrage in America began in the 1820s with the writings of Fanny Wright. In her book, Course of Popular Lectures (1829) and in the Free Enquirer, Wright not only advocated women being given the vote but the abolition of slavery, free secular education, birth control and more liberal divorce laws.

Wright received little support for her views and the next significant development did not take place until 1840 when two members of the Society of Friends, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, travelled to London as delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention. Both women were furious when they, like the British women at the convention, were refused permission to speak at the meeting. Stanton later recalled: "We resolved to hold a convention as soon as we returned home, and form a society to advocate the rights of women."

Margaret Fuller was another supporter of women's rights. In her book, Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845) she wrote: "We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue."

Samuel May, a Unitarian clergyman in Massachusetts, was one of the few men who advocated equal rights for women: "But some would eagerly ask, should women be allowed to take part in the constructing and administering of our civil institutions? Allowed, do you say? The very form of the question is an assumption of the right to do them the wrong that has been done them. Allowed! Why, pray tell me, is it from us their rights have been received? Have we the authority to accord to them just such prerogatives as we see fit and withhold the rest? No! woman is not the creature, the dependent of man but of God. We may with no more propriety assume to govern women than they might assume to govern us. And never will the nations of the earth be well-governed until both sexes, as well as all parties, are fairly represented and have an influence, a voice, and, if they wish, a hand in the enactment and administration of the laws."

However, it was not until 1848 that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organised the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. Stanton's resolution that it was "the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the sacred right to the elective franchise" was passed, and this became the focus of the group's campaign over the next few years. The only man who attended the meeting was Frederick Douglass. According to Ida Wells: "Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave, was the only man who came to their convention and stood up with them. He said he could not do otherwise; that we were among the friends who fought his battles when he first came among us appealing for our interest in the antislavery cause."

In 1866 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone helped establish the American Equal Rights Association. The following year, the organisation became active in Kansas where Negro suffrage and woman suffrage were to be decided by popular vote. However, both ideas were rejected at the polls.

In 1869 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed a new organisation, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). The organisation condemned the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments as blatant injustices to women. The NWSA also advocated easier divorce and an end to discrimination in employment and pay.

Another group, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was formed in the same year in Boston. Leading members of the AWSA included Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe. Less militant that the National Woman Suffrage Association, the AWSA was only concerned with obtaining the vote and did not campaign on other issues. The campaign for women's suffrage had its first success in 1869 when the territory of Wyoming gave women the vote. However, an amendment to the federal Constitution concerning woman suffrage that was introduced into Congress in 1878 was overwhelmingly defeated.

In the 1880s it became clear that it was not a good idea to have two rival groups campaigning for votes for women. After several years of negotiations, the AWSA and the NWSA merged in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The leaders of this new organisation include Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Livermore, Carrie Chapman Catt, Olympia Brown, Amelia Bloomer, Frances Willard, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Anna Howard Shaw.

Over the next twenty years a large number of women became involved in the struggle for women's rights. This included Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Rose Schneiderman, Ida Wells-Barnett, Inez Milholland, Nina Alexender, Cornelia Barnes, Blanche Ames, Edwina Dumm, Rose O'Neill, Fredrikke Palmer, Ida Proper, Lou Rogers, Mary Wilson Preston, Mary Sigsbee, Ellen Gates Starr, Mary McDowell, Edith Abbott, Grace Abbott, Alzina Stevens, Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop, Alice Hamilton, Rheta Childe Dorr, Alice Beach Winter, Margaret Robins, Margaret Haley, Helen Marot, Agnes Nestor, Madeline Breckinridge, Sophonisba Breckinridge and Nell Brinkley.

Mary Church Terrell was another important figure in the suffrage movement. She argued: "The elective franchise is withheld from one half of its citizens, many of whom are intelligent, cultured, and virtuous, while it is unstintingly bestowed upon the other, some of whom are illiterate, debauched and vicious, because the word people, by an unparalleled exhibition of lexicographical acrobatics, has been turned and twisted to mean all who were shrewd and wise enough to have themselves born boys instead of girls, or who took the trouble to be born white instead of black."

Rheta Childe Dorr pointed out that this was a worldwide movement: "Not only in the United States, but in every constitutional country in the world the movement towards admitting women to full political equality with men is gathering strength. In half a dozen countries women are already completely enfranchised. In England the opposition is seeking terms of surrender. In the United States the stoutest enemy of the movement acknowledges that woman suffrage is ultimately inevitable. The voting strength of the world is about to be doubled, and the new element is absolutely an unknown quantity. Does anyone question that this is the most important political fact the modern world has ever faced?"

Working with journals such as the Women Voter, The Women's Journal, Woman Citizen and The Masses, the suffragists mounted vigorous campaigns to gain the vote. They tended to concentrate their energies in trying to persuade state legislatures to submit to their voters amendments to state constitutions conferring full suffrage to women. Individual states gradually yielded to these demands. In 1893 women got the vote in Colorado, followed by Utah (1896), Idaho (1896), Washington (1910), California (1911), Arizona (1912), Kansas (1912), Oregon (1912), Illinois (1913), Nevada (1914) and Montana (1914).

While studying at the School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in London, Alice Paul, joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and her activities resulted in her being arrested and imprisoned three times. Like other suffragettes she went on hunger strike and was forced-fed.

Paul returned home to the United States and in 1913 she joined with Lucy Burns and Olympia Brown to form the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage (CUWS) and attempted to introduce the militant methods used by the Women's Social and Political Union in Britain. This included organizing huge demonstrations and the daily picketing of the White House. Over the next couple of years the police arrested nearly 500 women for loitering and 168 were jailed for "obstructing traffic". Paul was sentenced to seven months imprisonment but after going on hunger strike she was released.

After the United States joined the First World War, the protesters were continually assaulted by patriotic male bystanders, while picketing outside the White House. Arrested several times, Lucy Burns spent more time prison than any other American suffragist. Doris Stevens claimed that Burns became the most important figure in the militant campaign: "It fell to Lucy Burns, vice-chairman of the organization, to be the leader of the new protest. Miss Burns is in appearance the very symbol of woman in revolt. Her abundant and glorious red hair burns and is not consumed - a flaming torch.... Musical, appealing, persuading - she could move the most resistant person. Her talent as an orator is of the kind that makes for instant intimacy with her audience. Her emotional quality is so powerful that her intellectual capacity, which is quite as great, is not always at once perceived."

In January, 1918, Woodrow Wilson announced that women's suffrage was urgently needed as a "war measure". The House of Representatives passed the federal woman suffrage amendment 274 to 136 but it was opposed in the Senate and was defeated in September 1918. Another attempt in February 1919 also ended in failure.

In May 1919 the House of Representatives again passed the amendment (304 to 89) and on 4th June 1919 the Senate finally gave in and passed it by 66 to 30. On 26th August 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment was certified by the Secretary of State, when Tennessee, the thirty-sixth and final state needed, signed for ratification.

One of the campaigners, Crystal Eastman, argued: "The problem of women's freedom is how to arrange the world so that women can be human beings, with a chance to exercise their infinitely varied gifts in infinitely ways, instead of being destined by the accident of their sex to one field of activity - housework and child-raising. And second, if and when they choose housework and child-raising to have that occupation recognized by the world as work, requiring a definite economic reward and not merely entitling the performer to be dependent on some man. I can agree that women will never be great until they achieve a certain emotional freedom, a strong healthy egotism, and some unpersonal source of joy - that is this inner sense we cannot make women free by changing her economic status."

On this day in 1921 Matthias Erzberger was murdered by in Baden by members of the Freikorps in Germany. 

Matthias Erzberger, the son of a craftsman, was born in Wurttemberg, on 20th September, 1875. He became a journalist and worked for the Deutsches Volksblatt.

Erzberger joined the Centre Party and was elected to the Reichstag in 1903. On the left of the party he attacked the way that Germany treated the African people in its colonies.

Erzberger initially supported the country's involvement in the First World War but by 1917 was calling for a negotiated peace. On 11th November, 1918, Erzberger headed the German delegation who signed the Armistice.

In June, 1919 Erzberger became finance minister and he endorsed the Treaty of Versailles. His liberal views made him unpopular with Adolf Hitler and other right-wing nationalists..

On this day in 1953 Rachel Barrett died of a cerebral haemorrhage, at the age of seventy-eight at the Carylls Nursing Home in Rusper, West Sussex.

Rachel Barrett, the daughter of Welsh-speaking parents, Rees Barrett, land and road surveyor and Anne Barrett, née Jones, was born on 12th November 1874 at 23 Union Street, Carmarthen. Educated at a private school in Stroud, she later won a scholarship to Aberystwyth College, gaining a BSc (London) in 1904. After graduating with an external degree in 1904 she became a science teacher in Penarth.

Barrett explains in her autobiography that she was a supporter of women's suffrage: "In 1905 I became a science mistress at Penarth County School and taught there two years, and it was during this time that I became interested in the new movement for womans suffrage. In 1906, like everybody else, I read in the newspapers of the campaign of the militants and felt for the first time that they were doing the right and only thing. I had always been a suffragist - since I first began to think of the position of women at all - but with no hope of ever seeing women win the vote."

In the Autumn of 1906 Barrett heard Nellie Martel address a audience in Cardiff. At the end of the meeting she joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). The following year she helped Adela Pankhurst when she arrived in Cardiff as the WSPU organiser for Wales. " I helped her in her work, speaking at meetings, indoors and outdoors, and falling into great disfavour with my headmistress who considered all public work of that kind unsuitable for a woman teacher, more especially when her science mistress was reported in the local papers as drenched at an open-air meeting at the Cardiff docks."

In 1907 Barrett resigned from her teaching post and enrolled as a student at the London School of Economics. She also helped the WSPU in the by-election campaign at Bury St. Edmunds. Later that year Christabel Pankhurst asked her to become a full-time WSPU organiser. Although sorry to give up her studies she noted that "it was a definite call and I obeyed." In 1910 she was appointed WSPU organizer for Wales and moved to Newport, Monmouthshire.

In January 1910 she led a deputation to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George. "When the truce to militancy was decided upon during the time of the Conciliation Bill I was sent to the constituency of the chief opponent, Mr Lloyd George. There I interviewed his supporters, organised meetings and finally led a deputation to him of women from the constituency. We were received in house in Criccieth where we spent 2 1/2 hours around his dining table arguing hotly. We left, I more convinced than before of his determined opposition to the WSPU and the insincerity of his support of the suffrage, and the other women (mostly liberal and not WSPU members) with their eyes very much opened."

The discussion with David Lloyd George convinced her of the insincerity of his support for the suffrage cause. She had also trust in the Liberal government headed by Herbert Asquith. Barrett was now considered to be one of the most important member of the WSPU and Annie Kenney described her as "an exceptionally clever and highly educated woman, she was a devoted worker and had tremendous admiration for Christabel Pankhurst."

In early 1912 Christabel Pankhurst decided to run WSPU operations in France in order to avoid arrest. Annie Kenney was put in charge of the WSPU in London. She appointed Rachel Barrett as her assistant. Every week Annie travelled to Paris to receive Christabel's latest orders. Fran Abrams has pointed out: "It was the start of a cloak-and-dagger existence that lasted for more than two years. Each Friday, heavily disguised, Annie would take the boat-train via La Havre. Sundays were devoted to work but on Saturdays the two would walk along the Seine or visit the Bois de Boulogne. Annie took instructions from Christabel on every little point - which organiser should be placed where, circular letters, fund-raising, lobbying MPs... During the week Annie worked all day at the union's Clement's Inn headquarters, then met militants at her flat at midnight to discuss illegal actions."

At a meeting in France, Christabel Pankhurst told Frederick Pethick-Lawrence and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence about the proposed arson campaign. When they objected, Christabel arranged for them to be expelled from the the organisation. Emmeline later recalled in her autobiography, My Part in a Changing World (1938): "My husband and I were not prepared to accept this decision as final. We felt that Christabel, who had lived for so many years with us in closest intimacy, could not be party to it. But when we met again to go further into the question… Christabel made it quite clear that she had no further use for us."

As a result of this expulsion, the WSPU lost control of Votes for Women. They now published their own newspaper, The Suffragette. Although Annie Kenney was the official editor, Rachel Barrett was given control over the publication of the newspaper. According to her autobiography she thought it was "An appalling task as I knew nothing whatever of journalism. However, after terrible struggles and some mistakes I was able to carry on to the satisfaction of the editor in Paris, whom I went over to see every now and then and to whom I often talked on the telephone when I could always hear the click of Scotland Yard listening in."

In 1912 Christabel Pankhurst decided to start an arson campaign. The historian, Fern Riddell, has pointed out: "From 1912 to 1914, Christabel Pankhurst orchestrated a nationwide bombing and arson campaign the likes of which Britain had never seen before and hasn't experienced since. Hundreds of attacks by either bombs or fire, carried out by women using codenames and aliases, destroyed timber yards, cotton mills, railway stations, MPs' homes, mansions, racecourses, sporting pavilions, churches, glasshouses, even Edinburgh's Royal Observatory. Chemical attacks on postmen, postboxes, golfing greens and even the prime minister - whenever a suffragette could get close enough - left victims with terrible burns and sorely irritated eyes and throats, and destroyed precious correspondence."

On 30th April 1913 the police raided the WSPU's office at Lincoln's Inn House. As a result of the documents found several people were arrested including (editor of the The Suffragette), Edwy Godwin Clayton, Flora Drummond, Annie Kenney, Harriet Kerr (office manager), Beatrice Sanders (financial secretary), Geraldine Lennox (sub-editor) and Agnes Lake (business manager).

When he was arrested Clayton said: "I think this is rather a high-handed action. I am an extreme sympathizer with the Suffragette causes. What evidence have you against me?" He confirmed he had written the letter but refused to comment on the contents. The letter read: "Dear Miss Kenney, I am sorry to say it will be several days yet before I can be ready with which you want. I have devoted all this evening and all of yesterday evening to the business without success. Evidently it is a difficult matter, but not impossible. I nearly succeeded once last night and then spoilt what I had done in trying to improve upon it. By next week I shall be able to manage the exact proportions, and I will let you have the results as soon as I can. Please burn this."

During the trial Matthias McDonnell Bodkin read extracts from a document headed "Votes for Women" and underneath "YHB". Bodkin claimed that YHB stood for Young Hot Bloods. The label was derived from a taunt thrown at Emmeline Pankhurst in one of the newspapers, which ran: "Mrs Pankhurst will, of course, be followed blindly by a number of the younger and more hot-blooded members of the union". As a result of them being single women one newspaper described the Young Hot Bloods as "a spinsters' secret sect".

Bodkin claimed that the police seized a great number of documents, that showed according to Bodkin that Clayton "put his knowledge and his brain at the Union's disposal for the purpose of carrying out crimes and of producing the reign of terror in London." Receipts for money he had been paid by the union were produced in court.

The most incriminating evidence was a letter sent by Edwy Godwin Clayton to Jessie Kenney in April 1913 that was found inside a book on the 1831 Bristol Reform Riots. Bodkin said: "We did not know until these documents were seized at their offices that they had an analytical chemist in their service – a man who, as we know, written a secret letter which the vain folly of Miss Kenney causes her to leave in her bedroom. the letter he tells her he had been experimenting, and was on the brink of success. Clayton ended his letter: "Burn this letter."

Bodkin provided other documents written by Clayton. One document in Clayton's writing was headed "Various Suggestions" and read "Scheme of simultaneously smashing a considerable number of street fire-alarms. This will cause tremendous confusion and excitement and should be as especially a good idea. It should be at once easier and less risky to execute than some other operations". Particulars as to timber yards and cotton mills also followed, as well as a plan for burning down the National Health Insurance Office.

In his summing up Justice Walter Phillimore, remarked that it was one of the saddest trials in his experience of nearly sixteen years as a Judge. "How in morals and how in good practical sense could such things, if they be true be justified? It was said that great causes had never been won without breaking the law. That might be true of some cases; it was very untrue of others. If every recorded act of anarchy, then, as history proceeded on its long course, the human race would reach a position of absolute savagery, and the only chance of salvation would be the obliteration of memory."

During the trial, Rachel Barrett said: "When we hear of a bomb being thrown we say 'Thank God for that'. If we have any qualms of conscience, it is not because of things that happen, but because of things that have been left undone." Barrett was described by one of the prosecuting barristers at the trial as "a pretty but misguided young woman".

After an absence of an hour the jury found all the prisoners guilty, with strong recommendations for leniency of sentence in the case of the three younger women, Rachel Barrett, Geraldine Lennox and Agnes Lake. The Judge said: "I agree with you, gentlemen of the jury, in the discrimination which you have made between the younger and elder men and women… which I propose to show in their sentences: As I have said, I assume you have been animated through out by the best motives. It is not merely that some of you have committed organized outrages, but I am more concerned with the incitement that has been given to young and irresponsible women, whose actions are not always balanced by their reason to do things which you are sure to regret."

Barrett was sentenced to six months in prison but Annie Kenney was sentenced to eighteen months and Edwy Godwin Clayton got twenty-one months. Barrett immediately began a hunger strike in Holloway Prison. After five days she was released under the Cat and Mouse Act. Barrett was re-arrested and this time went on a hunger and thirst strike. When she was released she escaped to Edinburgh. where she was looked after by Dr Flora Murray.

While working at The Suffragette Rachel Barrett met Ida Wylie, the Australian novelist, who was a contributor to the paper, and they are thought to have become lovers. Together they visited Christabel Pankhurst in Paris. On her return Barrett had surgery and lived under a pseudonym (Rachel Ashworth) to avoid re-arrest.

A number of significant figures in the WSPU left the organisation over the arson campaign. This included Elizabeth Robins, Jane Brailsford, Laura Ainsworth, Eveline Haverfield and Louisa Garrett Anderson. Leaders of the Men's League For Women's Suffrage such as Henry N. Brailsford, Henry Nevinson and Laurence Housman, argued "that militancy had been taken to foolish extremes and was now damaging the cause".

Hertha Ayrton, Lilias Ashworth Hallett, Janie Allan and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson stopped providing much needed money for the organization. Colonel Linley Blathwayt and Emily Blathwayt also cut off funds to the WSPU. In June 1913 a house had been burned down close to Eagle House. Under pressure from her parents, Mary Blathwayt resigned from the WSPU.

In February 1914, Christabel Pankhurst expelled Sylvia Pankhurst and Adela Pankhurst from the WSPU for refusing to follow orders. Beatrice Harraden, a member of the WSPU since 1905, wrote a letter to Christabel calling on her to bring an end to the arson campaign and accusing her of alienating too many old colleagues by her dictatorial behaviour: "It must be that... your exile (in Paris) prevents you from being in real touch with facts as they are over here."

Henry Harben complained that her autocratic behaviour had destroyed the WSPU: "People are saying that from the leader of a great movement you are developing into the ringleader of a little rebel Rump." According to Martin Pugh "she had fallen into the error of all autocratic leaders; her power to manipulate personnel was so complete that it left her increasingly surrounded by sycophants who lacked real ability."

Rachel Barrett remained loyal to Christabel Pankhurst. The British government declared war on Germany on 4th August 1914. Two days later, Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the NUWSS declared that the organization was suspending all political activity until the conflict was over. Fawcett supported the war effort but she refused to become involved in persuading young men to join the armed forces. This WSPU took a different view to the war. It was a spent force with very few active members. According to Martin Pugh, the WSPU were aware "that their campaign had been no more successful in winning the vote than that of the non-militants whom they so freely derided".

The WSPU carried out secret negotiations with the government and on the 10th August the government announced it was releasing all suffragettes from prison. In return, the WSPU agreed to end their militant activities and help the war effort. Christabel Pankhurst, arrived back in England after living in exile in Paris. She told the press: "I feel that my duty lies in England now, and I have come back. The British citizenship for which we suffragettes have been fighting is now in jeopardy."

After receiving a £2,000 grant from the government, the WSPU organised a demonstration in London. Members carried banners with slogans such as "We Demand the Right to Serve", "For Men Must Fight and Women Must Work" and "Let None Be Kaiser's Cat's Paws". At the meeting, attended by 30,000 people, Emmeline Pankhurst called on trade unions to let women work in those industries traditionally dominated by men. She told the audience: "What would be the good of a vote without a country to vote in!".

It would seem that Rachel Barrett did not agree with this policy and she left her role at The Suffragette in August 1914. Barrett and Ida Wylie traveled to America. They bought a car and roamed around the country, from New York to San Francisco. Both women were close friends of Radclyffe Hall and gave her support during the obscenity trial following the publication of her lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness (1928). Hall lost the case and all copies of the novel were destroyed.

Rachel Barrett and Edith How-Martyn established the Suffragette Club (later the Suffrage Fellowship) in 1926 in order "to perpetuate the memory of the pioneers and outstanding events connected with women's emancipation and especially with the militant suffrage campaign 1905-1914, and thus keep alive the suffragette spirit".