Tax-Resistance Meeting at Highbury.
A protest meeting was held at Highbury Corner on
, as a result of the sale of
Dr. [Winifred S.] Patch’s
goods last week, owing to her refusal to pay taxes. Miss Guttridge was in the
chair, and there was a good attendance. The speakers were Mrs. [Charlotte]
Despard and Mr. Laurence Housman. Mrs. Despard, in the course of her speech,
said that the Woman Suffragists were going to adopt measures of coercion
towards the Government. They were going to “stop the traffic.” Mr. Laurence
Houseman took up the phrase. He said, “Stop the traffic, and you have found
the solution of the situation. Bad government makes government
expensive.” He spoke of the spirit of liberty which is latent in every human
being — the spirit of liberty which is always roused to its fullest force
under tyrannical oppression. That spirit was awake in the women who are
fighting for the Franchise to-day. He thought that most of the men of this
country did not realise the spirit of that fight because they had come by
their own votes too easily. They had practically been born to the Vote. They
had come into it too long after their fathers’ fight for it to feel its true
basis of liberty. He remarked that wherever Mrs. Despard went to-day the
Government became an object of ridicule. She ought to be in prison, as she
had refused to pay the Imperial taxes, but they were afraid to put her there — (laughter and cheers) — and she would not go to prison because she was more
logical than the Government. If they gave her representation she would agree
to taxation — the two must go together. It was disgraceful in a democratic
country that women like Mrs. Despard, who have done noble work for the
community in general, should be shut out from the Parliamentary
administration of the people’s interests.
