In 1888 Manning was interviewed by social activist and journalist Virginia Crawford for "The Pall Mall Gazette", and was instrumental in settling the London dock strike of 1889 at the behest of Margaret Harkness. He played a significant role in the conversion of other notable figures including Elizabeth Belloc, mother of famous British author Hilaire Belloc, upon whose thinking Manning had a profound influence. Manning did not however support enfranchising women. In 1871, at St. Mary Moorfield, he said he hoped English womanhood would ‘resist by a stern moral refusal, the immodesty which would thrust women from their private life of dignity and supremacy into the public conflicts of men.'