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Lady Charlotte 2 Letter to Mrs P
From Aristocrat to Revolutionary - the letters of Lady Charlotte Fitzgerald
Volume 1 1905-1919
Published by the Limerick Workers Press 1955

After the 'Battle of Parliament Square', Lady Charlotte was taken by her father to their home in Ireland. He was annoyed with his daughter for 'brawling in the streets' as he put it, but he remained supportive of the general principle of women's suffrage. The increasingly violent behaviour of the WSPU however led to a break both by him and his daughter.

In February 1911, only a couple of months after the family move to Limerick, Charlotte's father, Lord Ballincarron, died. The title passed to her twin brother David, who preferred the life of London to rural Ireland. Accordingly, he made over the family house in Limerick to his sister, together with sufficient money to maintain it and to keep her in a 'suitable' style. From there she began her extraordinary correspondence with prominent figures in the arts, literature, politics and science. No one of note seems to have escaped her attention. In her personal archive are copies of letters (and replies) to George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Rosa Luxembourg, Tom Mann, all three Pankhursts, Charlotte Despard, Eugene Debs, James Connolly, Lorenzo Portet, Emma Goldman, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, Marianne Moore, Winston Churchill, Herbert Asquith, George Askwith, Albert Schweitzer and many others.

She did not however limit her activities to correspondence. She was a member of the WSPU before her move to Ireland and after quitting membership she remained closely linked with Sylvia Pankhurst and her Women's Suffrage Federation. On settling in Limerick in 1910 she quickly joined the Irish Women's Franchise League and later became an active member of the Irish Women Workers' Union. She was closely associated with most of the key figures of the Irish Left, working tirelessly to bring together the three strands of socialism, women's suffrage and Irish Independence. Indeed, without her involvement it is unlikely that Ireland would have escaped the shift to the right that was such a dramatic feature of English politics in the 1920s and 30s.

Her break with the WSPU came early in 1912, even before they began their major campaign of arson and bomb attacks.

3rd June 1912
Dear Mrs Pankhurst,
Until now I have given the W.S.P.U. my unlimited and unstinting support. After the appalling behaviour of the police in Parliament Square in 1910, I was convinced that direct action was needed if women were to attain equal suffrage rights. The latest campaign though, of attacks on pillar boxes and arson attacks on public buildings, is going too far. I now hear talk of much more to come and perhaps worse. These tactics will not gain us support, but the opposite. Attacks on post boxes do not make any difference to the men in control, they only disrupt the lives of ordinary people, men and women. The burning down of buildings, even buildings largely used by men such as cricket pavilions places lives at risk. If the talk I hear is to be believed then very soon someone will be killed and it is highly likely to be an innocent person uninvolved in the struggle. I must therefore resign my membership of the W.S.P.U.

With great regret
Charlotte Fitzgerald

The reply was brief and acerbic:
To be militant in some way is a moral obligation. Every woman owes this to her own conscience and self-respect, and to future generations of women. If any woman does not take part in militant action, she shares in the crime of the Government.
EP
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