Lecture 4: Votes for Women and Chastity for Men

Democracy - 4

Lecture 4: ‘Votes for Women – and Chastity for Men’.

Suffragism in the Second Reform Debates:

First debated in Parliament in 1867, when John Stuart Mill put down an amendment to the Second Reform Act. Defeated by 196 votes to 73 – nearly 400 MPs didn’t even bother to vote.

The Times: ‘ever since the world has existed, the great mass of women have been of weaker mental power than men, and with an instinctive tendency to submit themselves to the control of the stronger sex. Their destiny is marriage, their chief function is maternity, their sphere is domestic’ (21 May 1867).

Gladstone: ‘there has never within my knowledge been a case in which the franchise has been extended to a large body of persons generally indifferent about receiving it’. This was the challenge that inspired the first mass membership suffrage societies.

Mobilizing for Suffragism:

Three things needed for a successful women’s suffrage movement:

-A sense that women are specifically excluded from the franchise, simply because of their sex;

-A sense that politics matters in everyday life;

-A sense that voting is the main instrument of political influence.

None of these are obviously the case before the 1860s; but this begins to change thereafter:

-The explosion in the male electorate made female exclusion more obvious;

-By 1914, the most successful pressure groups were all operating through the electoral system: e.g. the Irish Parliamentary Party and the Labour Party;

-The distinction between local and national politics was breaking down, as central government intervened more directly in domestic and welfare policy.

Two key movements:

-The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), founded in 1897;

-The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which broke away in 1903.

The NUWSS

Dominated by Millicent Garrett Fawcett – an economist, novelist and educationalist.

Published The Common Cause and the ‘A.B.C. of Women’s Suffrage’, setting out practical arguments for women’s suffrage. Often targeted at working class issues, eg:

‘In a pit village milk is hard to get and difficult to keep sweet, so babies and invalids suffer. Fruit and vegetables are also hard to get as there are few gardens or allotments. With a vote, the woman could improve the Small Holdings Act, and make its application much less cumbrous and difficult’ (Common Cause, 10 October 1913)

By 1914, NUWSS had about 55,000 fee-paying members and another 40,000 associate members. It had grown from just 15 branches in 1897 to nearly 500 by the start of the war.

1912: electoral pact with the Labour Party, including the financing of an Election Fighting Fund.

Signs of Progress:

By the end of 1900, the Liberal, Labour and Conservative parties had all voted in principle for women’s suffrage.

1897: the House of Commons voted by a majority of 71 for the principle of ‘votes for women’.

1908: a women’s suffrage motion carried by 273 votes to just 94.

So why did nothing happen until 1918?

The Suffrage Dilemma:

Which women should be enfranchised, and how?

A Property Qualification?

-Rewards the single woman, who has ‘failed in the role of her own sex’;

-admits ‘large numbers of women leading immoral lives’;

-gives young ‘flappers’ the vote, not respectable married women;

-these women are likely to be propertied, and so Tory;

-might delay the onset of further male enfranchisement.

No Property Qualification?

-will have consequences for unenfranchised men, too, potentially opening the way to universal male suffrage;

After December 1910, Liberals and Unionists had exactly the same number of MPs (272). So any shift in the balance of power – however slight – could determine the balance of parties for a generation.

The WSPU

Founded by the Pankhursts in 1903. Wealthy donors included Lady Brassey, Lady Parsons, Princess Sophia Dhuleep Singh, the Countess de la Warr, Lady Barclay, Lady Wolsely…

Advertisers in the suffragette press included Burberrys, Debenhams, Swan & Edgar, and other fashionable boutiques. Annual income by 1914 was about £47,000 – more thanthe Labour Party’s.

For militancy:

-it put suffragism on the front page of the news, at a time when it was fighting for public attention against tariff reform, the People’s Budget, House of Lords reform and the Home Rule crisis;

-it offered inspiring examples of self-sacrifice for the cause;

-Force-feeding produced a series of terrible images for the Liberal party. The allegation that Liberals were ‘torturing women’ in prison, for demanding something that most Liberals thought they ought to be given, was extremely damaging.

Against militancy:

-to maintain public attention, the level of outrage had to keep ratcheting up;

-it tended to invite counter-violence by angry opponents: when suffragettes burned down the athletics centre at Bristol University, students retaliated by destroying the WSPU shop;

-it played to the same negative stereotypes suffragists were trying to dismantle: that women were hysterical, unable to control their emotions and impervious to rational argument.

While the WSPU was losing members by 1914, the non-militant societies were booming. The NUWSS increased its membership from 8,000 in 1908 to 55,000 in 1914. Most women may have opposed militancy, but it forced more women to think about the issue and to decide where they stood.

Anti-Suffragists:

‘The recruiting ground for the militant suffragettes is the half million of an excess female population … a class of women who have all their lives been strangers to joy, women in whom instincts long suppressed have in the end broken into flame. These are the sexually embittered women in whom everything has turned to gall and bitterness of heart and hatred of men … One half of their nature has undergone atrophy with the result that they have lost touch with their living fellows, men and women’ (Sir Almroth Wright, a scientist and pioneer of vaccination, The Times, 1912).

Yet the anti-suffrage societies had more than 40,000 female members by 1914.

Many of their leading figures were educated, progressive and politically active women. For example:

-Mrs Humphry (Mary) Ward: bestselling novelist and co-founder of Somerville College, Oxford; active in Local Government Association and keen to see more women involved in local politics;

-Elizabeth Burgwin: a leading educationalist and specialist on special needs schooling; testified before parliamentary committees and worked for a period in the Ministry of Labour.

-Violet Markham: an imperial activist and social investigator, who kept her maiden name when she married.

Their arguments often centred on the nature of politics, rather than on gender difference. For example:

-Many opposed state intervention in the home and in welfare policy. As long as women were excluded from the electorate, the state would lack the moral authority to intervene too far. So limiting the franchise was a way of constraining the extension of the state.

-Mary Ward argued thatvoting had nothing to do with policy-making. Voting was a way of channeling the physical violence of men, providing a constitutional outlet for protest. Policy was made by elites – Royal Commissions, official inquiries, the higher journalism – ‘and in this world, men and women are equal’.

Women were often appointed to Royal Commissions as independent experts, to balance the (male) party appointees. Such women feared losing this status once they had the vote.

Mrs Burgwin (1908): ‘If we sign the petitions which we have sent out, and let the men know how we feel about the matter, I feel certain we shall be restored. I say “restored”, because I have known and experienced that I am not treated in the same serious manner that I was two years ago’.

The Impact of War:

Often suggested that women earned the vote by wartime service. But:

-those women enfranchised in 1918 were over the age of 30, not the younger women who worked in the munitions factories;

-the War might even have strengthened traditional gender divisions: the argument that men, unlike women, might be called upon to fight in war was a lot more plausible after several years of conscription than it had been in 1912.

-War gave politicians who were looking for a line of retreat an excuse to change their minds. Especially important for Asquith;

-It vastly expanded the reach of government. During the War, government was involved in food rationing, medical provision, working conditions and so on. The type of state for which many of the Antis had been fighting was gone forever;

-Above all, perhaps, the War resolved the issue of male enfranchisement. Once universal male suffrage became inevitable, many of the difficulties discussed previously disappeared. Furthermore, a limited female enfranchisement, centring on older, propertied women, became a useful counterweight to the new male voters.

What difference did the vote make?

-A shift in the kind of legislation passed, with a torrent of what was commonly thought of as ‘women’s legislation’. See p. 7 for a list.

-A new effort by all parties to reach out to women voters. The Conservative party, for example, valorised the female elector as ‘the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Home’.

But:

-Until 1987, there were never more than 27 female MPs returned at a general election; only with the introduction of all-women shortlists before the 1997 election did the number rise above 100;

-There has, to this day, never been a female Chancellor of the Exchequer. Until 2006, there had never been a female Foreign or Home Secretary.

-The internal structures of the main parties opened much more slowly to women. The Carlton Club, for example, first admitted women as full members in 2008 [that is not a misprint].

Could democracy work?

The interwar period saw the failure of parliamentary governments across Europe, refurbishing anxieties that democracy was inherently unstable.

Stanley Baldwin, 1935:

my job is to try and educate a new democracy in a new world and to try and make them realize their responsibilities in their possession of power, and to keep the eternal verities before them.

The first Prime Minister born after the coming of universal suffrage was John Major.

All his predecessors could view universal suffrage as experimental and uncertain.

But that is a theme for another series…

The March of the Women, by Dr Ethel Smyth (1911)

‘Shout, shout, up with your song!

Cry with the wind for the dawn is breaking;

March, march, swing you along,

Wide blows our banner and hope is waking.

Song with its story, dreams with their glory,

Lo! they call, and glad is their word!

Loud and louder it swells,

Thunder of freedom, the voice of the Lord!

Long, long – we in the past

Cowered in dread from the light of heaven,

Strong, strong – stand we at last,

Fearless in faith and with sight new given.

Strength with its beauty, Life with its duty

(Hear the call, oh hear and obey!)

These, these – beckon us on!

Open your eyes to the blaze of day.

Hail, hail – ye who have dared

First in the battle to strive and sorrow!

Scorned, spurned – nought have ye cared,

Raising your eyes to a wider morrow.

Ways that are weary, days that are dreary,

Toil and pain in faith ye have borne;

Hail, hail – victors ye stand,

Wearing the wreath that the brave have worn.

Life, strife – these two are one.

Naught can ye win but by faith and daring.

On, on – that ye have done

But for the work of to-day preparing.

Firm in reliance, laugh a defiance –

(Laugh in hope, for sure is the end).

March, march – many as one,

Shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend.’

Smyth was one of the leading composers of her day, and a friend of the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. When she was arrested for suffragette violence, Beecham visited her in prison. He was astonished to find the prisoners lined up the yard, singing The March of the Women, while Smyth conducted from her window with a toothbrush. Note the two models on which the song draws: the hymn and the marching song. Religious and military motifs were both prominent in suffragette material.

‘Women’s Legislation, 1918-1929’

1918Parliamentary Qualification of Women Act

Registration of Midwives Amending Act

Affiliation Orders (Increase of Maximum Payment) Act

1919Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act

Nurses Registration Act

1920Married Women’s Property (Scotland) Act

Maintenance Orders (Facilities for Enforcement) Act

1922Married Women (Maintenance) Act

Infanticide Act

Criminal Law (Amendment) Act (amending age of consent and law of rape)

Law of Property Act (amending women’s rights of inheritance)

1923Matrimonial Causes Act (amending divorce law)

Bastardy Act

1925Guardianship of Infants Act

Widows, Orphans and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act

Summary Jurisdiction (Separation and Maintenance) Act

1926Adoption of Children Act

Registration of Midwives and Maternity Homes Act

1927Nursing Homes Registration Act

1928Equal Franchise Act

1929Age of Marriage Act

The assumption that these issues were ‘women’s legislation’ reminds us how little social attitudes had changed, but such legislation does suggest an anxiety to reach out to women voters. For a full list, with details, see M. Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement (2000), pp. 108-9.

Figure 1: A famous suffrage poster that was endlessly reissued. As ever more men gained the vote, the exclusion of women became both more obvious and more insulting.

Figure 2:The combination of household duties with paid employment made it particularly difficult to build a working class suffrage movement.

Figure 3:The Suffragette, produced by the WSPU, specialised in eye-catching cover art. In the image on the left, suffragism is presented in Manichean terms as a battle between good and evil. The image of the suffragette as a Joan of Arc figure was a common WSPU motif. The issue on the right commemorates Emily Wilding Davison, who ran under the king’s horse at Ascot in 1913. Davison is presented as an angelic figure, representing ‘The Love that Overcomes Fear’.

Figure 4: Welsh suffragettes and Indian suffragettes parade on Coronation Day in 1911, dressed in national costume. The WSPU specialised in eye-catching events of this kind, marking out the suffrage movement as national and imperial.

Figure 5: Nelson Harding’s Ruthless Rhymes for Martial Militants were published in the American press in 1913, but based on events in Britain. They were widely reproduced, and typify the increasingly contemptuous portrayal of militancy.

Figure 6: Another mocking image, from Punch, 6 July 1910. A Jiu-Jitsu craze swept Britain and America after Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War.

Figure 7: Suffragists were commonly thought of as sexless women, who had turned to politics after failing to find a husband.

Figure 8: An anti-Labour cartoon from the Daily Mirror, November 1922 (reproduced from A. Bingham, Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in Inter-war Britain (2004)).As so often in Conservative propaganda after 1918, the housewife is valorised as a bulwark of commonsense and anti-socialism. The caption reads ‘It is British women who will cause his downfall next week’.