For six months the Suffragettes had devoted themselves to strengthening and extending their organisation, electioneering, the distribution of literature and the holding of propaganda meetings of which, between May and October, some 3,000 had taken place, including a demonstration in Boggart Hole Clough, Manchester, attended by 15,000 people, another in Stevenson Square, Manchester, attended by 20,000 people, and meetings in Hyde Park each Sunday at many of which the audiences had numbered upwards of 12,000. Nevertheless the question of Votes for Women, which had bulked so largely in the papers whilst the militant tactics had been in full swing, had almost entirely disappeared from the Press during these latter months and anyone who judged from the newspapers alone might well have imagined that the agitation had died down. This fact, together with the Government's continued refusal even to consider the question of granting Votes to Women, was enough, without the Prime Minister's curiously provocative statement, to convince the Suffragettes that the time had come to recommence an active militant campaign, and from this time onward a Cabinet Minister's Meeting was invaded on almost every day until Parliament met in the new year. Again and again members of our Union, with a courage and perseverance which too few people have ever recognised, presented themselves at these meetings, and, having asked their question or made their protest, were rudely set upon by crowds of stewards and flung fiercely and violently out into the street.