Was the war effort crucial in getting women the vote?

Ross Bowman

History Coursework

Q 1) What where the aims and methods of the suffragists?

In the UK, woman suffrage was first advocated by Mary Wollstonecraft in her book A vindication of the rights for woman (1792) and was demanded by the chartist movement of the 1840s. The demand for woman suffrage was increasingly taken up by prominent liberal intellectuals in England from the 1850s on, notably by John Stuart Mill and his wife Harriet. The first woman suffrage committee was formed in Manchester in 1865, and in 1867 Mill presented to parliament this committee’s petition, on which had been collected about 1,550 signatures. Committees and societies started forming in almost all of the major cities in Great Britain and they managed to get about 3,000,000 signatures sent to parliament. One of the consequences of this was for parliament in 1869 to grant women tax payers the right to vote in municipal elections, and women were also allowed to sit on county and city councils. In 1897 the various suffragist societies united into one National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), thus bringing a greater degree of coherence and organization to the movement.

Although the right to vote was the suffragists’ main cause they had other ambitions, for example the married women's property act of 1870, which gave married women the right to own property and to keep their earnings. Women also campaigned to get a divorce on the same grounds as men, the matrimonial clauses act of 1857; this introduced a simpler and cheaper system of divorce. Women could now bring divorce cases against their husbands for cruelty, desertion and adultery. Also in 1886, the guardian of infants act allowed widowed mothers to become legal guardians of their children. From 1891 women could not be forced to stay in their husband’s home against their will.

The methods by which the suffragists tried to get the vote was by the policy of persuasion, hoping that through meetings, petitions, reasoned argument, legal propaganda and the threat of tax avoidance, they would be able to persuade parliament to agree to their demands, for example on the 23rd June, 1888, Annie Besant published an article on White Slavery in London where she drew attention to the dangers of phosphorous fumes and complained about the low paid to the women who worked at Bryant and May. One of the reasoned arguments she used was to explain why women should not pay taxes if they have no say in what is done with the money.

Q 2) Why had women failed to get the vote before 1914?

Women had not been given the vote up to 1914 because of several reasons. The first is the male attitude towards women of the time, they thought that they were “intellectually inferior to man” which meant that they did not think that women had the brain capacity to vote.

The government did not want to give in to the suffragists or suffragettes (who had split off from the suffragists and formed their own more militant group as they believed peaceful ...

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Q 2) Why had women failed to get the vote before 1914?

The government did not want to give in to the suffragists or suffragettes (who had split off from the suffragists and formed their own more militant group as they believed peaceful protest was not working) as they thought that this would make them look weak. They used the excuse that they had more important matters that concerned them like Irish Home Rule; this was with the Irish nationalists wanting an Ireland that was independent from Britain. There was also the matter of the labour unrests: The government thought if they gave women the vote and gave in to their demands then it would encourage more labour unrest and the labourers would revolt and go on strike, thinking that if they gave into some women the government would give in to them.

Although the suffragettes brought publicity along with them and their more militant ways, a lot of men thought that going around and breaking windows was not the proper way for someone to act if they were to be given the vote, The Times newspaper reported “reckless fanaticism is not really a qualification for the votes”. This gave the government even more of an excuse to not let women have the vote as it backed up what many men thought of women. Some of the ways and methods that the suffragettes used were rather radical for their times. A lot of these methods included -

Heckling members of the government at public meetings. This was done to Winston Churchill in Manchester in 1905. For this Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenny were thrown out of the meeting.
Chaining themselves to the railings of Buckingham palace.
Assaulting politicians who were known to oppose votes for women.
Making attacks on public property, slashing pictures in the national gallery and breaking shop windows.
Arson attacks. Pillar boxes were set on fire and even houses and churches

But the most famous single incident happened in 1913 when Emily Davison, a leading suffragette, threw herself out in front of King George V’s horse in the national derby at Epsom, this drew a lot of attention to their cause, although sadly she died from this heroic act, becoming a martyr. The government also said that if the women themselves were split (suffragists and suffragettes) and could not decide upon what they wanted and how to get it then how would they ever be able to vote?

A lot of the members of parliament were split, within their own parties as well, but the main reason as to why women did not get the vote is because of Asquith (the prime minister of the time) most of his party (liberal) wanted women to get the vote but Asquith being an old fashioned man thought women could not have the vote because they were too dumb, this is a famous quote he said “they are for the most part hopelessly ignorant of politics, credulous to the last degree, and flickering with gusts of sentiment like a candle in the wind”. This forced the liberals into a quandary, this means they were in a state of difficulty or perplexity with their leader. The other thing was that if they did give women the vote how could they tell which women should be given the vote as not all men got the vote. They had to decide whether to give it to just upper class women, at what age they should give the vote to and whether if they changed the women's voting rights they may have to change the men’s voting rights to include all the men as well. They did not just want to give it to upper class householder women as they would vote conservative, so they had to spread their votes to other women to gain the votes they needed.

Q 3) How did the war effort help women get the vote?

In 1914 when the war started the women who had been campaigning stopped all their efforts for getting women's rights and turned it towards helping with the war. Women took up the jobs that had previously been done by men who had now gone off to fight. People thought that women would not be able to cope with these jobs as they were supposed to be intellectually inferior to men, but women could easily cope with the jobs. This showed everyone that women were capable enough to do men’s jobs just as well as men, which gained women a lot of respect from their peers. With this came a lot of change in the male attitude towards women, who now realised that the stereotypical idea of a woman was not necessarily true. One of these changed male attitudes was Asquith’s, but he could not just change where he stood on the matter because he still believed that although he now knew women did have the brain power to vote, he did not want to lose face with and open ‘about turn’ in his policies. There were numerous other factors as well that influenced Asquith before he finally gave women the vote.

One of the other reasons contributing to Asquith’s change of policy was as a result of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia caused fear of unrest in the British government, if women were still ignored it might spread to Britain and might end proving to be a focus for general and social unrest, so the government had to take this into consideration as well.

The continued suffragettes and suffragists protests meant the government could not ignore the issue of votes for women any longer. The government might have been concerned that women's protests would be more militant and more widely supported after their war effort as they had gained a lot more respect from people who had dismissed the idea before. The women had also gained the confidence and independence they needed through the experiences of war.

There was a 12 months residency for all soldiers which meant that no soldiers could vote so finally the government had to change their whole voting system. This provided the British government with the leverage to change the voting system to include women as well, settling the workers unrest as well as stopping the women’s protests.

Conclusion

I do not believe that the war effort was crucial to getting the vote as I believe that women would have attained the vote eventually anyway, but I do see the war as a catalyst that helped women get the rights they wanted. The protests had worried the government and they were also worried about spread of protests moving to include other male workers at the end of the war.

Here is a simple flow diagram of how I think the war helped –

Protests War Catalyst _

(Scared the (women did (changes in the

Government) men’s jobs) electoral register)

Moment/Opportunity

(Votes for women more

acceptable after war effort)