the chief trades and their subsidiary industries, women are rigorously excluded. When I was quite young I desired to be an engineer. I was almost as happy among the wonders of machinery as among flowers. The theories of impact, of momentum, of tension - the arrangements of levers, pulleys, planes and screws to make machines, were things to conjure with, with me. But as I was a woman such mechanical talent as I possessed had to be wasted. No department of engineering, theoretical or practical, was open to me. As the desire of women to practise as doctors was opposed, as the would-be women lawyer today is thwarted, so is the would-be women engineer, surveyor, or architect, so is the woman who desires to enter any of the better organised departments of industry." In 1907, she became unhappy that her suggestions for the direction of the WSPU were being dismissed, and disputes with the Pankhursts precipitated her parting ways with the organisation. Founding of the Women's Freedom League In September 1907, Emmeline Pankhurst suspended the WSPU constitution and took direct control of the Union alongside her daughter Christabel Pankhurst. On 14 September, Billington-Greig, Edith How-Martyn, Charlotte Despard, Alice Abadam, Marion Coates-Hansen, Irene Miller, Bessie Drysdale, and Maude Fitzherbert signed an open letter to Emmeline Pankhurst, explaining their disquiet with the way the organisation was run. The dissenters, and a significant number of other members, left the WSPU went on to form the Women's Freedom League (WFL). The new organisation chose the motto "Dare to be Free" and used white, gold and green as their colours. Billington-Greig resigned from the WFL in December 1910 as she felt that the membership was overly influenced by militant tactics, such as "raids" on Parliament organised by the Pankhursts. Billington-Greig believed the Pankhursts were focused on suffrage at the expense of securing wider freedoms for women. Billington-Greig's surviving writings from 1906 to 1907 demonstrate her views being refined, with her theory coming to encompass a demand for full equality between the sexes, and a rejection of poor tactics to achieve positive outcomes. Later career For the next three years after leaving the WFL, Billington-Greig worked as a freelance journalist and speaker, and was not engaged with activist movements. Her daughter Fiona was born in December 1915. During World War I, Billington-Grieg was involved in fundraising for ambulances - for example, supporting Elsie Cameron Corbett at