Women’s suffrage was not seen as politically important. Most of the public and the part of the government that did support votes for women were slowly put off the idea by the Suffragettes’ increasing uses of extreme violence. The government also felt that ultimately giving the suffragettes ‘what they wanted’ would show that they were giving in to tactics that easily amounted to terrorism.
The statement that the Member of Parliament makes about reasons for voting against votes for women gives only one reason for why the government was against the principle of giving women the vote. As well as the increased violence and women’s suffrage not being a major issue, the government felt that the WSPU especially did not have a clear policy of what they wanted to achieve in terms of law. The members of government who did want to support votes for women did not want to vote against their own parties. The Liberals had also lost several seats and were more concerned with other, not to mention their own party’s political issues.
By the time that war broke out, people’s attention was now completely diverted from women’s votes. Following the WSPU’s split, all of the suffragettes took different paths. Emmeline Pankhurst showed her support for the country being at war by calling off a major campaign to break into Buckingham Palace. The government therefore released the over one thousand suffragettes that were held in prison. In the Suffragettes’ last phases of activity from 1912 up until the outbreak of War, they were more unpopular than ever.
The position of women did, however, dramatically change in other ways. They began working in factories that produced warfare equipment for high wages, giving them an essential part in the war effort. The Suffragettes even turned their attention away from votes to work, and organized a ‘Right to Work March’ in 1915, led by Christabel Pankhurst, in which over 30,000 women marched. When women did eventually gain the vote in 1918, it was probably due to their work in the war effort, although the government did partially give into it as they were afraid that Suffragette action would start again when the War was over. People such as Prime Minister Asquith, who had previously been opposed to giving women the vote, spoke in favour of it after the War, stating that it could not have been won without the efforts of women.
In conclusion, suffragette activity seemed to create more opposition and make more people reluctant to support the Suffragettes and votes for women than before suffragette campaigning. The suffragettes gained many more enemies through their violent campaigning methods, and although that they claimed it brought them all the more publicity, this publicity seemed to be more negative than positive. When women were given the vote in 1918, it seemed that it had more to do with the realization of the importance of women in the war effort than the campaigning of the Suffragettes, and if the government’s decision to give women the vote in 1918 was influenced by the Suffragettes, it seemed that it was not because the government finally completely agreed with the points that the Suffragettes had made, but it was more out of fear of the violent campaigning resurfacing once more.
