The whole point of the campaign was that even though the women acted the same as men and had the same attitudes, without the franchise, they could not balance the inequality because as long as there were only men in parliament, only male issues would be sorted out.
The campaign also pointed out the fact that the parliament was totally hypocritical. The parliament boasted that Britain was the most advanced democracy in the world, even though half of the population was disenfranchised and therefore they argued for women’s suffrage by saying that the government should prove that Britain is actually the most advanced democracy, instead of making false claims.
Another reason why a campaign for women’s suffrage developed was because their quality of life was very poor, and they believed that by getting the vote, they would be able to improve it. There were a number of reasons why it was so poor. At that time, women were being sexually exploited with prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases. The government turned a blind eye to child and adult prostitution and the women could do nothing about it. They were being blamed and punished for spreading sexually transmitted diseases, even though this was never scientifically proven, and were falling ill due to the uncontrolled spread of sexually transmitted diseases. By having women in parliament, the women believed that they would be able to stop this and bring laws on prostitution, which would therefore improve their quality of life.
The women could not enjoy a good life, or even have enough money to feed themselves as their working conditions and wages were very poor, and as there were no laws. By 1872, 31/2 million women were earning 60% less than men. By getting the vote, they could pass bills to improve their pay and their working conditions and this was why they need to be enfranchised.
They also believed that once in parliament, they could improve the quality of life for everyone because they would worry about social and feminist issues, like Divorce Laws and Safety issues. This was not being done while they had only men in parliament because the men were more worried about world politics and the expansion of the British Empire, so they did not have time to sort out local issues.
But the inequality and the poor quality of life for women had been around for centuries, so why did the campaign take full swing in the years after 1870?
The campaign started in the years after 1870 because the women were becoming more confident that they would be able to be enfranchised, as so much for women’s rights had already happened, that they thought the government would agree to one more thing. In 1860, a School for Nursing was created by Florence Nightingale at St. Thomas’s Hospital, and in 1869, single or widowed rate paying women were given the right to vote in municipal elections. In 1870, they were given the right to serve on a School Board and in 1875, they began to serve as Poor Law Guardians. In 1885, the Criminal Law Amendment Act was passed, which raised the age of consent to 16, protecting girls from prostitution and exploitation. To add to this, Florence Nightingale had recently become a heroine in the Crimean War and Louise Twining and Angela Burdett-Coutts had recently shown their reforms and qualities to the public, which showed that women were capable of intensive work.
As well as giving the women confidence to carry on and further their campaign, it also gave them a chance to show off their skills. For example, by attending the Nursing School, it gave them a chance to show that they were capable of doing important work, that the men previously believed they couldn’t. This produced an even stronger argument for why they should get the vote, because it disproved the theories that the men were putting forward about women not being able to do important jobs, and becoming too emotional.
So in conclusion, why did a campaign for women’s suffrage develop in the years after 1870? It developed because the women believed that there was an inequality between the rights of the sexes and that the laws were prejudiced against women, so they thought that being enfranchised would improve their quality of life. It began in the years after 1870 because so much had already happened to improve women’s rights, that they were confident they could be enfranchised as well.
2. Traditionally it has been believed that the Suffragists, or the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) were the conservative and law-abiding part of the campaign, and that the Suffragettes, or the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) were the radical, extreme and illegal part, and that they were completely separated and that were no similarities between the two. However there is now evidence to suggest that this was not the case. The Suffragettes were formed by Suffragists who felt disappointed by Millicent Fawcett’s leadership and her methods. But still most of the first half of the campaign consisted of peaceful suffragist methods. They were based on the Anti-Corn Law League of the 1840’s and centred on discussions, public meetings, processions, propaganda and petitioning. Even though the suffragettes appear to begun their campaign using suffragist methods, there were still some distinct differences.
While the Suffragists held organised, indoor meetings, where only the people who took an interest in women’s suffrage attended, the Suffragettes held open-air meetings and presented it to the public, rather than just to the people who were interested. This resulted in more people knowing about their campaign, and therefore more people supporting them.
The Suffragists held calm, peaceful processions, like the ‘Mud March’, which demonstrated the number of supporters they had, whereas the Suffragettes held fully organised and loud processions, which were to force their campaign onto the public, so that they gained more support. They identified themselves with uniforms of purple, green and white, and some dressed up as iconic female figures, like Joan of Arc or Florence Nightingale.
The Suffragists advertised their campaign through their newspaper The Common Cause and the radio station Voiceless London. The Suffragettes also had a newspaper, The Suffragette, but they took the advertising of their campaign one step further. They did a lot of merchandising and handed out leaflets and sold pens, tea towels and mugs.
When the Suffragists petitioned to the government for women’s suffrage, they were ignored, just like the public’s opinion has been ignored in the war against Iraq in March. The Suffragettes also petitioned, but they did not accept being ignored, and this was when they took on the more radical policy. They saw that the ‘constitutional’ methods’ were not working, and believed that the only way to get the suffrage was to be more aggressive. Also, random acts of violence by women were occurring, and soon the leaders of the Suffragettes realised that this was the ‘only’ way forward. While the Suffragists carried on the peaceful campaign, the Suffragettes began the more famous methods of their campaign. Until now, the main difference between the Suffragists and the Suffragettes was that the Suffragettes always seem to take the methods employed by the Suffragists one step further, and one step more extreme. But now, the difference was to change. This was when the differences became quite clear, in that the Suffragists were using peaceful methods, whereas the Suffragettes were using illegal methods. The methods of the Suffragettes were basically illegal forms of revolution.
The Suffragette methods included tax evasion. They employed a policy of “no vote, no tax” where they said that if they had to pay tax, just like the men, then they should also get the vote, just like the men. If not, then they would not pay tax. They also refused to be entered into the census, which was illegal. Their argument was that if women were nonentities, or ‘non-people’ as they were often described, then why should they be included in a list of all the people in Britain.
The violence came first in the form of window smashing. It began as a random act of violence by a woman, but Emmeline Pankhurst believed that this is what would get them the vote and so adopted it as a policy. She even went as far as to describe it as the “most powerful argument in politics”. An example of how extreme the women were prepared to go with window smashing was on 1 March 1912, when a group of high-class women went to Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Street and Regent Street in London and at 4 pm, started smashing all the shops’ windows.
The window smashing led on to arson attacks. Arson attacks were very dramatic at night and the idea was to make the general public so scared and shocked that even they would force the government to agree. An example of an arson attack with significant importance was when Lloyd George’s summerhouse in Oxshott was set on fire. In July 1912, the Theatre Royal Dublin was nearly burnt down by Mary Leigh, and another woman tried to blow up a cinema.
Other forms of vandalism also took place. In 1911, ‘Slasher Mary’ walked into the National Gallery in London and slashed a £1 million painting by Velasquez because she thought that it was treated better than her leader, Christabel Pankhurst who was in jail at the time. They went to Kew Gardens and destroyed all the plants, and burned the words “no vote, no golf” onto the golf courses. They also cut down the wires of the telegraph poles. All these acts of vandalism did not have a specific significance to the campaign. They were simply trying to frighten and blackmail the government into agreeing and giving them the right to vote.
On 4 June 1913, Emily Davidson ran onto the course during the Derby and stood in front of the Prince of Wales’ horse, trying to attract the king’s attention. The horse did not stop and she was trampled and died later in hospital. Even though the Suffragettes did not plan this, they took full advantage of this in propaganda, and transformed her into a martyr, just like now, where Osama Bin Laden is using the example of suicide bombers to further his cause. This incident, in conjunction with others, showed how the campaign had suddenly become much more dangerous. It had gone from simple civil disobedience to terrorism. It can be described as terrorism because terrorism is described as “the use of violence and intimidation to achieve political ends” which is exactly what the Suffragettes were doing.
They began to employ guerrilla tactics. Women in Scotland managed to persuade chemists who were sympathetic to their cause to give them bottles of acid. With this acid, they would make bombs and put them in post-boxes, which, when opened, would explode in the postman’s face and destroy all the letters. Again, this had no significance to the actual campaign to get suffrage; it was merely an intimidation tactic to blackmail the government. We can see that a lot of the methods the Suffragettes employed that the Suffragists did not were not actually going to help them in their argument for suffrage, merely to intimidate and force the government into agreeing. It seems that they realised that they were not going to win with a debate, and needed to resort to violence and force to get it.
In 1909, a new tactic was introduced. In July, Marion Dunlop-Wallace was sent to Holloway Prison, where she went on a hunger strike and was released within a few days. This was not official Suffragette policy yet, but when Mrs Pankhurst learned of this, she decided to make it policy. Soon, all Suffragettes in prison went on hunger strike and were released. To stop this, the government introduced the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’, which meant they had to resort to force-feeding. The Suffragettes managed to turn this to advantage as well. They published pictures of women being force-fed, and used the example of Constance Lytton, who became paralysed after being force-fed, just like the example of Bobby Sands who died from hunger strike in Northern Ireland, as propaganda to promote their campaign.
Finally, the women took on the strategy of the open rejection of men. The ceased all sexual relations and refused any men to be involved in the cause, so all the large donors and sympathisers had to be turned away because they had no relationship with men. Again, this was more an intimidation tactic, rather than an argument for women’s suffrage. While the Suffragettes had been employing these tactics, the Suffragists continued using the ‘constitutional’ method under Millicent Fawcett.
So, in conclusion, the differences between the methods of the Suffragists and the Suffragettes were that the Suffragists employed legal, peaceful methods throughout the campaign, whereas the Suffragettes employed these methods at first, but then when they realised that they were not working, they took up more extreme, illegal methods to further their cause.
3. I agree with the statement that women over 30 gained the vote in 1918 mainly because of women’s contribution to the war effort for some reasons and disagree for others. I agree because the government felt a huge sense of gratitude towards the women for their help in the war, but I disagree because there were many political and international changes happening at the time that could also have helped women gain the vote.
It is made clear that their help in the war was a factor in being enfranchised in a speech made by Gifford Lewis where he says, “The highly skilled and dangerous work done by women during the war in the munition factories and in auxiliary and nursing services at the front was probably the greatest factor in the granting of the vote to women at the end of the war.” This suggests that women were given the vote as gratitude for their help in the war. Even Herbert Asquith, who had been totally against women’s suffrage, said that without the women’s help, the war could not have been won.
In August 1914, Emmeline Pankhurst called of the militant campaign, as a response to the outbreak of war, because she was very nationalistic and jingoistic. For Mrs Pankhurst, when it came to war, she had a very simplistic attitude of the British versus the ‘Boche’ or Germans. This shows that the government could have given them the vote as gratitude for ceasing to cause trouble during the war.
Mrs Pankhurst donated money to the war effort and placed the organization of the Suffragette movement at the disposal of the government to help recruit women into the war effort. In 1915, Lloyd George gave the Suffragettes £2000 to organize a ‘right to serve’ march, called the Great Procession of Women, which helped women join the labour force. The Suffragettes also changed the name of their paper, The Suffragette, to Britannia, and began to give white feathers to people they thought were cowards.
The Land Army was set up in which upper and middle class women became agricultural labourers. They left their jobs as servants and started to take ‘male’ jobs. By 1917, there were 2500 female bus conductors, a hundred and seventeen thousand female transport workers, and twenty-five thousand munitions workers. By women taking these jobs, it supplied the army with more soldiers as women were taking the jobs that were necessary on the home front.
The munitions workers appealed most to the public as it was the most dangerous job on the home front, with a fourteen hour day and the ever possible risk of developing TNT poisoning which turned their skin yellow and in 1916, the first death from toxic jaundice was recorded. On top of this, in 1917, many women died in Silverton in East London as a result of a munitions factory exploding. These deaths showed the public, and the government, that women were dying for the war effort as well as men. As this was mostly unheard of in the past, the government felt they had to reward the women for risking their lives.
The women began to work on the battlefield as well. In 1916, the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAACS) and the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRENS) were formed and the Voluntary Aid Detachments, consisting of women, were nursing the soldiers in France amidst horrific conditions. Again the government felt they had to reward the women for risking so much and so gave them the vote.
There is also another reason why it is plausible to say that women gained the vote due to their help in the war. It did not seem like they were going to get the vote before the war because no major political party was prepared to accept it as a policy, and because the Suffragettes needed something else to present to the government to persuade them, as their current methods did not seem to be working. They had no clear policy, simply intimidation tactics, but the government were not prepared to succumb to intimidation, and as their acts were nothing more than terrorism, they failed to win mass support. They were losing support because they began to damage churches, property and art. As it cannot be pure coincidence that they were not going to gain the vote at the beginning of the war, and they did at the end of it, it seems that the war greatly helped their campaign.
But it seems that there were other factors that helped them gain the vote as well, not just their help in the war. Even Gifford Lewis suggests this when he says that it was the “greatest” factor, suggesting that there were others.
During the war, major political changes occurred. In 1916, a new Prime Minister was elected, Lloyd George, who was for women’s suffrage and, as mentioned earlier, even funded their causes. Also many new M.P.s, like Balfour and Henderson, were sympathetic to female suffrage and when the Speaker’s Conference was set up to organise franchise reform, many of its members included these new M.P.s who were sympathetic to female suffrage, and therefore they worked to try and have women included in these reforms.
The Speaker’s Conference was set up because the government realised that many of the soldiers would not be able to vote when they returned from the war, because franchise rules included having lived for one place for one year, which the soldiers had not done. So in 1918, when the Representation of the People Act was introduced, giving all men over 21 the vote, women had to be included as well. This was because the government’s argument for these changes is that it was unfair for these men to have fought for their country and then not be allowed to vote, and many women were also in this position.
Also, when a coalition government was formed during the war, the Suffragists who had become divided into political parties were joined once again and this created a powerful lobby group, which could present the case for women’s suffrage to the government once again.
It seems that the government was reflecting international trends because women in New Zealand, Australia, Finland and Canada had been granted the vote, so why should Britain have stayed behind. Even in America women had nearly been enfranchised as the House of Representatives had passed female suffrage by a majority of two thirds.
There is a possibility that women could have been enfranchised as a precautionary measure made by the government because even though the militant actions had ceased in view of the war, they could easily have been started again as Christabel Pankhurst was still editing the Suffragette newspaper and so to avoid this, they gave women the vote. This suggests that even though the government were not succumbing to intimidation before the war, they seem to have succumbed because they did not want it to begin again.
So in conclusion, no I do not agree that women over 30 gained the vote mainly because of their contribution to the war effort, because even though it was a great helping factor, it could not have happened without factors like political change and franchise reforms. Like most things, it relied on more than one event to come about. Also, the vote was given to women over thirty, even though most of the women helping in the war were under 30.
