The 1918 Representation of the People Act was the start of female suffrage in Great Britain. The bill was passed by an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons (385 for to 55 against) – an element of support that surprised the Suffragettes and other suffragist movements. The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave women of property over the age of 30 the right to vote – not all women, therefore, could vote – but it was a major start.
Why did the House of Commons give such overwhelming support to the bill when just four years earlier it had been apparently so hostile to female suffrage?
A general assumption is that the act was a ‘reward’ for the vital work done by women during World War One. Before the war, society had been suitably angered and horrified by the acts of the Suffragettes – arson, vandalism, attacking politicians, the Derby of 1913 etc. Parliament rationalised on the following: how could women be given such a right when they could not be trusted to act decently? During the war, Britain had experienced a potentially disastrous munitions shortage and this was only solved by the work done by women in munitions factories. Women had also driven buses, worked on surface jobs in coal mines etc. Vital work was also done on farms to keep Britain well stocked with food.
This assumption has now been challenged as not being as accurate as was once thought. Women in France did equally as important work in World War One but did not receive the right to vote after the war. Why? One of the reasons put forward for this is that there was no pre-war suffragist movement in France - and certainly not the militancy of the Suffragettes. An argument put forward for the inclusion of a female suffrage section in the 1918 Representation of the People Act is that the work of the Suffragettes and the suffragist movements pre-1914 had been important. While the Suffragettes had shocked society (both male and female), no-one was keen to return to the violence of pre-1914 Britain, a nation exhausted by war. Therefore, the role of the Suffragettes may have been far more important than was originally thought.
Britain was shocked by the violence of the Russian Revolution – could it risk such social disorder here? If the Suffragettes re-started their campaign, where would it end? Could the government risk taking such a gamble? Many women who had done such valuable work during the war, had now by 1918 been made redundant or were being pressurised into returning to their old employment – invariably domestic work. How could the government gamble that these women would not join the Suffragettes, thus strengthening their numbers and engage in violent activities (even more violent that pre-1914)? Once society went into a spiral of violence, how could it be contained?
So why did the bill pass with such a huge majority? Did men in the House of Commons suddenly convert to the cause of the suffragist movement?
Many MP’s did believe that some reform was inevitable and that by passing the female suffrage section of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, it would keep the suffragists happy but also delay more radical reform – such as full and equal voting rights for men and women. A general view was that such equality could be delayed by up to thirty years if the 1918 bill was passed with a limited female suffrage section in.
The bill received support from the Conservative Party because their research had shown that in 142 constituencies, 98 supported women getting the right to vote and only 44 were against the principal. If this support was true over the whole of the country’s constituencies, then the party had to support female suffrage or potentially face the consequences at the general election.
While the suffragist movement welcomed the 1918 Representation of the People Act, it was, in fact, a remarkably conservative measure. Therefore, when the ‘small print’ was read, Conservative MP’s and those in other parties that opposed the issue of female suffrage, may well have seen the act as a success in that it could have gone a lot further.
The act only enfranchised women over 30. Many of the women who had worked in the fields and in munition factories were under 30 and therefore did not get the right to vote. There was a belief among politicians that women over 30 were more able to understand the intricacies of politics and that they would be less likely to support radical ideas. It was also reckoned that women over thirty would be more likely to be married with children – also making them less likely to belong to radical movements with radical ideas.
Ironically, those who had been the main supporters of the Suffragettes pre-1914 were also excluded. Educated middle-class women had gone into white-collar work after 1920 and many lived in rented property away from their parents as a sign of their independence. Therefore they were not property owners and did not qualify to vote in general elections
The bill passed the House of Lords with similar ease despite its reputation for being anti-female suffrage. Why?
The prominent lord, Lord Curzon, was president of the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage. He was expected to lead the campaign in the Lords to defeat the female suffrage section in the 1918 Representation of the People Act. In fact, Curzon had made it plain that he did not want to have a clash with the Commons and he stated that he would not oppose the bill. Other members of the Lords seemed to lose heart over his decision not to act as their spokesman and the Lords voted for the bill by 134 votes for to 71 against.
After being passed by both Commons and Lords, the bill only needed the Royal Ascent from George V. This it received as a failure to give it would have led to a huge constitutional crisis. It is also possible that advisors to George V made it clear that the bill only had a limited impact where female suffrage was concerned.
The 1918 Representation of the People Act increased the electorate to about 21 million. 8.4 million were women. Therefore the act gave women a 40% ‘stake’ in elections. About 22% of women 30 years of age and above were excluded from the right to vote as they were not property owners. These were women who were invariably working class. The tendency to think that many of the newly enfranchised women were conservative by nature and Conservative politically, seems to be true. Research on voting patterns in the 1920’s does indicate that women did tend to vote for the Conservatives.
At the time the 1918 Representation of the People Act seemed a major victory for the suffragist movements. Millicent Fawcett called the enactment of the act the greatest moment in her life. A victory party was held by suffragist societies at the Queen’s Hall in March 1918. Having witnessed in one act a jump from 0 to 8.4 million in terms of the number of women who could vote, many did see the act as a victory. However, there were women who still saw the act as a betrayal as it still classed them as second class citizens to men. The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave all men over the age of 21 the right to vote (and aged 19 if the men had been on active service in the armed forces). Therefore, politically women were still not the equal to men in Britain even after the 1918 act.
Women achieved full equality regarding suffrage in 1928.
The Suffragettes
One hundred years ago women in Britain didn't have the right to vote. Because they couldn't vote it was hard to change things. Girls didn't get as good an education as boys and most universities wouldn't accept women. By 1910 there were about 1000 female students at Oxford and Cambridge universities and they had to get permission to go to lectures and were not allowed to take degrees.
Women earned less money than men even if they were doing the same job. But it was hard for women to get good jobs. They couldn't be accountants or bankers before 1910 and at that time there were no women diplomats, barristers or judges.
One of the most famous and powerful women of the nineteenth century, Queen Victoria, had said, "let women be what God intended, a helpmate for man, but with totally different duties and vocations". After Queen Victoria's death these attitudes remained especially as many powerful men used these words to stop women from getting a better deal.
By 1900 changes in the law meant that women were no longer forced to live with husbands who abused them. They could now have custody of their children if they were separated and could actually have control of their own property and earnings. However, most women were not able to get well-paid jobs as these were kept for men. So most women still depended on men.
Many women knew that the only way to change things so that they got the same rights and opportunities as men was to be able to make decisions alongside men. Men made the decisions in Parliament and men were in all the top jobs so women had no say in the things, which affected their lives and the lives of their children. Something big needed to change.
The Women's Social and Political Union, also known as the Suffragettes, was founded in Manchester on 10th October 1903. The leaders were Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst.
The suffragettes tried very hard to get change. The fact that women weren't allowed to vote meant that they also couldn't become Members of Parliament. Most of the men in Parliament didn't want women to be able to vote. Some said that women were not clever enough to make decisions for themselves, some said women weren't interested in politics and some were afraid that if women could vote they would have to give women more rights.
The suffragettes got people in Parliament to help them. On 25th April 1906 Keir Hardie introduced a debate about women's votes in the House of Commons. There was a separate place in the House of Commons for women to sit. It was called the Ladies Gallery. Many suffragettes went there to listen to the debate. But the men in Parliament just laughed and jeered so the women started to complain and because they complained they were dragged outside by the Police.
The suffragettes wrote lots of letters to newspapers and delivered big petitions to the King, the Prime Minister and other politicians. The petitions were ignored and many newspapers would not publish the letters. The newspapers were controlled by men and a lot of them did not want women to get the vote. Some newspapers did try to help the suffragettes and the suffragettes had their own newspaper, which was called "The Suffragette".
By 1913 the people who printed "The Suffragette" were hounded by the Government and the Police. It got so difficult that each issue of the paper had to be produced by a different printer. This caused lots of people, even some who didn't support the suffragettes, to be worried. This is because many people believed (as many do now) that newspapers should be free to write about different views and that the Government should not control the newspapers.
Today, in countries where people can't vote for their governments, newspapers can only write about the things their government says they can. This means that people might not get to know about things that their government wants to hide or they might only get to know part of the story. At the time of the suffragettes there was no TV, no Internet and no mobile phones. So, if you couldn't read about it in the newspaper you wouldn't know much about what was happening in your country.
The suffragettes tried to get the vote using petitions and getting their friends in Parliament to speak up for them. But this didn't work. So they did lots of things to get people to listen to them. They turned up at political meetings but were shouted down when they tried to speak. They usually got thrown out, were treated badly by the Police and often got arrested. So they started damaging property to try to make the Members of Parliament listen to them.
Many women got arrested for damaging property and got sent to prison. In prison some went on hunger strike. The Government thought that the women on hunger strike might die and they knew that people would be cross about that. So they decided to force feed the hunger strikers.
The kind of forced feeding they used was very cruel. Many people thought forced feeding was really a kind of torture. A doctor would force almost 2 feet of tubing through a woman's nostril and down her throat. She would then be forced to lie on the bed and the doctor would stand on a chair pouring milk and egg into the funnel at the end of the tube. This was very painful. It would often cause the woman to vomit and, in some cases it caused lasting damage. Lady Constance Lytton never fully recovered from being force fed.
Women were also beaten whilst in prison. After people got to know about the forced feeding and how horrible and dangerous it was the Government knew it had to stop doing it. They brought in a law to release hunger strikers who had got very ill, let them get a bit better, then put them in prison again. This made many of the women very ill.
One very famous suffragette, Emily Wilding Davison, was imprisoned 7 times. She was forcibly fed 49 times but suffered this because she felt so strongly that women needed to get the vote. She thought that if she could do something serious enough to get everybody's attention people would force the Government to stop torturing women and give them some rights.
Whilst in prison Emily, threw herself down a stairwell. She did quite a lot of damage to her spine but did survive. Later, after being released from prison Emily did something bold to get attention to the cause of votes for women.
On June 4th 1913 Emily Wilding Davison was at Epson Race Course. It was the day of the Derby race. As the King's horse, Anmer, was racing around Tattenham Corner Emily rushed on to the racecourse and tried to grab the bridle. It was a very dangerous thing to do. She was kicked by the horse and they fell to the ground together. Emily died from her injuries 4 days later.