Thus, by the year 1914, even though women still had not gained the right to vote, and in many ways were still seen as second-class citizens, the overall mood of public opinion had begun, slowly but surely, to recognise women and their roles and rights in British society as more of an equal one. This was prominently due to a virtuous combination of increased access to education for girls, general political changes taking place internationally – including the campaign for the enfranchisement of women – and the militant campaigning of women’s suffrage groups, especially the WSPU and its Suffragette supporters.
Question 2. Describe the ways in which the methods of the Suffragists and Suffragettes were different.
Women’s suffrage campaigners of Britain in the early twentieth century are often separated into two – of the most prominent – groups, these being the Suffragists and the Suffragettes. The Suffragists were, in effect, the original women’s suffrage organisation, consisting of well-educated, wealthy middle-class women. The Suffragettes on the other hand were spawned from a Suffragist group called the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, whose campaigners had been leading a low-key, indecisive struggle for the enfranchisement of women. The Suffragettes believed that these timid and indirect tactics were getting their cause nowhere, so Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst set up the Women’s Social and Political Union, devoted to attracting media attention to the campaign by any means possible, leading a militant drive towards votes for women, using any means necessary to get their point heard and hopefully altering public opinion favourably. The Suffragette’s slogan was “Deeds not Words”, and indeed this was what they believed in.
The Suffragists, as I have said, were the original women’s suffrage campaigners, and at first simply took part in meetings, discussions, harassed MPs, timidly looked for support and attention from the press, sent petitions to parliament and simply tried to persuade politicians to change the law to make women’s suffrage acceptable. Many groups for women’s suffrage developed in large towns and cities, many being in Manchester and London. This slow campaign was obviously grinding to a halt by the late 1880s, and there were conflicts within the groups about tactics that were being used at the time. Some groups believed that a campaign more widespread than just women’s suffrage should have been taking place, while others insisted that votes for women was a top priority. Millicent Fawcett, Helen Blackburn and Lydia Becker were the foremost of these campaigners, and together they formed the Central Committee of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, which later became known as the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.
The NUWSS, formed in 1897, was lead by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, and included more than five hundred regional groups from across Britain, and had many tens of thousands of members. Fawcett, a moral Suffragist, and with no intention of changing the tactics used by her predecessors in the campaign, placed her confidence in legal and peaceful ways to attempt to reach her cause.
As I have said, the Women’s Social and Political Union was set up by the Pankhursts along with their fellow campaigner Teresa Billington Greig in October 1903, because they thought the methods of the Suffragists to be far too irresolute and lacking in confidence and was in need of a higher-profile. The WSPU and their followers were nicknamed the “Suffragettes” by a British newspaper, and since then the name has stuck.
The Suffragettes led a much more powerful, attention-catching campaign. The members of the WSPU often got politicians personally involved in their media attention, and one such incident was when Constance Lytton, a prominent member of the WSPU threw a stone at Lloyd George’s car after he had been present at a meeting in Northern England. She was arrested, and in court offered a choice. She could either pay a fine of £4 or receive a month long prison sentence. She refused to pay the fine, and as soon as she got to prison went on hunger strike (a tactic used by many Suffragettes in the later campaign) and was released from prison after two days. Very soon after this, Lytton and a gang of Suffragettes attempted to break into a prison in Liverpool. In preparation to this action she had dressed up in cheap clothes, put on spectacles and had cut her hair. She was arrested for a second time, but gave her name in court as Jane Warton. She was sentenced to fourteen days of hard labour but once again went on hunger strike immediately. The government decided to use force-feeding to keep her alive, instead of letting her out of prison. When she was released she became paralysed due to her appalling treatment. The WSPU used their resourcefulness and intelligence to good effect in scenarios such as this one. They made many posters featuring Lytton dressed up as “Jane Warton”, and completely turned the tables on the government, who thought that they had the upper hand at this time.
As I have said, the Suffragettes also led a campaign not just of violence, but also of media attention and propaganda and this was something they were very successful at. They published magazines and newspapers such as “Votes for Women”, which was very widely read.
Other successes of the Suffragettes were prominently the fact that they were incredibly sufficient at drawing close media, and in turn, public attention to their campaign. This included their clever use of propaganda, such as the Constance Lytton scenario. Like all campaigns, the Suffragettes had failures, and one of the biggest of these was when Emily Davison threw herself under King George V’s horse at Derby race track. She died, and the Suffragettes had their first martyr, but many people began to question whether women’s suffrage was really a moral thing to grant. They asked if this is what an educated woman does, what does a non-educated woman do? So in after this public opinion was altered again, away from giving women the right to vote.
The timid Suffragists often argued that their violent comrades did more harm than good, and turn people’s support away from the campaign because of their militant tactics employed regularly. The Suffragettes argued that the Suffragists methods were getting the cause nowhere, but in truth, both groups had a certain equilibrium about them. By this I mean that without the Suffragists, the Suffragettes would never have even been formed, but without the Suffragettes and the WSPU, the campaign for women’s suffrage would have been left out of the limelight for far too long.
Question 3. Women over 30 gained the vote in 1918 mainly because of women’s contribution to the war effort. Do you agree? Explain your answer.
Women’s involvement in World War I clearly did have a huge impact on public opinion in relation to women’s suffrage, but it was not the only factor that led to the enfranchisement of women in 1918. In this essay I will first look at the inevitability of women ultimately gaining the vote, and also at the general political changes already taking place prior to the war, including the campaign for women’s suffrage. I will then go on to study the impact of women’s actual involvement in the war, which will lead to the question of “No Taxation Without Representation”. Next, I will consider the ways in which the British political parties saw the question of votes for women, and how it would affect them practically.
The reason I only partly agree with the statement is that it seemed inevitable that women were going to gain the vote, even without the First World War to push the campaign forward. British politics seemed to be moving more liberal, more left wing. The “Great Socialist Movement”, as phrased by feminist Ethel Snowden in 1913, was spreading rapidly across the globe – and Britain – as an ideal that was both practical and possible. Snowden also wrote, in relation to the inevitability of women’s suffrage: “Neither ignorance nor vice, self-seekers nor politicians, things present nor things to come, will be able to stay the onward march of womanhood in the struggle for the full and complete recognition of its humanity.” Arthur Balfour, a leading Tory politician, admitted the next substantial parliamentary reform would have to include the enfranchisement of women. With this knowledge, women’s suffrage campaigners were heartened, because it looked to them like this next reform would be happening soon, what with the many other major political and social activities taking place at that time, most prominently the question of the Home Rule Bill for Ireland and the Labour Movement.
Another reason I believe the enfranchisement of women was more or less inevitable was that the Suffragette campaign was becoming so violent and aggressive that the government could do nothing to overlook it or to reckon it a matter of little importance, as they had previously done. The WSPU and their followers purposefully attracted the attention of the media, making their cause ever more high-profile, and they seemed to be determined to do this in any way, and were certainly not subdued or worried about being arrested for their cause. They used propaganda to good affect, publishing magazines such as “Votes for Women”, and in these newspapers and magazines the campaigners often put photographs and posters which condemned things such as force feeding in prisons, and Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst once dressed up in prisoners’ clothes trying to alter the opinion of the public. In these forms the women’s suffrage campaigners tried, and often succeeded, in shifting public opinion from one of deeply conservative views to more liberal, open minded thinking.
Using their propaganda and various other methods that I have just spoken about, women’s suffrage campaigners appeared to have gained a subtle power and control over their cause, in a way that other campaigns had, prior to this, not managed to do. The campaigners, especially those of the WSPU, were extremely well organised, setting up shops and suchlike throughout Britain. There were nineteen Suffragette branches in London alone from 1907 to 1914. In these branches many women and men joined the campaign for women’s suffrage, and could also purchase copies of various Suffragette newspapers, sashes and badges, of which the proceeds went solely to the campaign. People saw this going on, and although the large majority of British people frowned upon the campaign of the Suffragettes, it was obvious that their relentlessness and strong effort was not going to continue in vain.
One example of this power that I have spoken about was in October of 1906, in which eleven Suffragettes (this group included Sylvia Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence) were arrested for disturbing the peace outside the House of Commons. When the women refused to pay a fine for their actions, they were all sent to Holloway Prison in North London. All eleven of the women were sent to the Second Division in the prison, meaning they could keep no contact at all with friends and family, and they were forced to wear prison uniform. The Suffragettes cleverly used this loss as quite the opposite. They saw it as a victory, because it meant they could use the media coverage of their campaign to put the point across that they were being treated more brutally than some other criminals. Seeing that by locking some Suffragettes up would not slow down the cause for women’s suffrage, the government released two of the women who had been arrested straight away. The nine that were left were moved to the First Division in the prison, and then released all of them as well, even before they had reached the half way stage in their prison sentences.
The final reason I believe that the enfranchisement of women was inevitable is because women were gaining other rights at this time, all over the world, and many countries other than the United Kingdom were giving women many rights, including the right to vote. In 1902 Australia gave women the vote, and Finland in 1906. The British people, including women’s suffrage campaigners, would surely have been hearing news of this, so again could do nothing but accept the fact that women’s unfair treatment was becoming more and more recognised across the globe. In England, women were being given more freedom than ever before. It was not much more, but it was certainly a start. They could become nurses as part of the medical profession, they could be part of School Boards, Health Boards, and the Municipal Councils Act gave women the right to vote in local government elections.
These roles women were beginning to play became much more prominent at the outbreak of World War I in 1914. This was because of the fact that by the end of the war, some three-and-a-half million men had been conscripted to the army, so many women were needed to take over these men’s jobs. Women began working on farms, in munitions factories, and in government offices, often as secretaries and suchlike. During the First World War they made huge contributions to Great Britain’s economy, often taking the jobs of skilled male workers, although the less liberal minded men in Britain did not take kindly to this, and thought it an atrocity that unskilled women were replacing them.
As time went by, the British government and armed forces became increasingly dependant on women’s labour. It seemed obvious that even the most reluctant anti women’s suffrage men (and women) could do nothing but allow the women working as factory hands et cetera to continue their jobs, for they knew that it was for the good of the country, and indeed the British Army in the First World War would have been at a complete loss were it not for the thousands of women working for them.
It also became evident in this time that the women working in industry and in offices as clerics and accountants and so forth were altogether necessary for the war effort. The British army became reliant on the “canaries” (women who worked in munitions factories with dangerous chemicals that turned their skin yellow were nicknamed this) that provided them with ammunition, vehicles, weapons and other various stocks and supplies. Although the female workers never got paid as much as their male counterparts, or were treated as well, they often got paid fairly well, and many women working in domestic services, for example, maids, left their jobs there and became factory hands for better wages. This feeling was a continuation of the demographic changes that had been happening all over Great Britain earlier, prominently during the Industrial Revolution.
The fact that for the first time women of all classes and backgrounds, from the poorest factory towns to the most influential women of that period were all uniting in their involvement in the war effort was a major one on the impact for this case. Women were gaining respect for their contributions made to the war, for their effort in cooperating with the government, for actually wanting to be part of the contributions being made (Christabel Pankhurst led a thirty-thousand strong “Right to Work” march in London at the beginning of The War), and the more conventional, tory minded people in Britain recognized that the Suffragettes had ended their militant campaign for the good of the country.
Even though women were making considerable contributions to the war effort, they were still working, often in labour-intensive jobs, were still making an economic contribution, and were still getting paid wages and therefore paying taxes. Women were beginning to question how it was possible for them to be paying for the running of their country but not being given even the smallest say in how it was done, or who it was done by. This principal of paying taxes added an irresistible pressure that they should have a say in how their taxes were spent. Working men had the vote, even some non-working men, and they had a say in how their taxes were spent. Convicts and the poorest men living on the bread line without jobs could even vote in general elections, and they were not even paying taxes.
This blatant infringement of the most basic of civil rights evidently had an impact on public opinion while the was lasted, as many more open-minded things women were able to do as a result of working for the war effort, but the problem was that as soon as the survivors of the WWI returned home, the trade unions gave the men their jobs back. This meant that the women who had replaced the fighting men lost out on a lot, including good wages and often much fairer treatment.
Although it seemed as though the gap through which women’s suffrage could have bridged in order to have been made law seemed like it was fast closing, the major political parties had not ignored the cease of violence from the Suffragettes nor the huge economic contributions made by many thousands of women. Also, it seemed as though reform was about to enter a new phase in Britain. In a history book named “Women at War”, the author writes: “During the four years of conflict a tremendous mood favourable to change had been created”. Linked with this, the political parties of Britain were in need of votes, and were determined to get them. This meant that they adopted huge pragmatic regimes, meaning they would do almost anything to gain votes, regardless of whether they thought it moral or it was a part of their manifesto. Ethel Snowden, an early twentieth century Feminist, wrote on this matter: “Egotism, pure and simple, is the bottom fact of most of the opposition to the political emancipation of women – egotism, when it is not prejudice. If it were possible to demonstrate beyond all shadow of a doubt that the majority of the new voters would vote for either of the two dominant political parties, that party would enfranchise women at the earliest possible moment.”
In the general election of 1910, the one before the outbreak of WWI, the Liberals won with a majority of two seats. They won 275, and the Torys were next with 273. Even though the parties were keen to gain votes, there were other major issues happening at that time as I have already said. These included the problem of Ireland, the Labour Movement, Socialism and the trade unions. This could have been seen as both positive and negative in terms of women’s suffrage, because politicians could have seen it as a minor case of little importance, or something that had to be considered in light of all the social unrest happening at the time.
To add to this unclear political activity, MPs were also questioning exactly how they would extend the vote to women, if they ever did at all. It looked as though the women’s suffrage campaigners wanted the right to vote on exactly the same terms as men, but the Liberal government was worried that this would mean the Conservatives gained more votes, and also that if women were given the right to vote, then the anti women’s suffrage believers would no longer vote for them. In the Liberal’s eyes, votes for women would simply not get them any better election results, therefore was not a major issue to them.
All this political and social action made it very unclear whether women’s suffrage was going to be granted, but at this stage it looked as though votes for women would only have happened before World War One if one of the major parties had adopted it as one of their main policies. They didn’t for the reasons I have just spoken about, but sure enough, women over the age of thirty were given the vote in 1918.
It is for these reasons that I both agree and disagree with this statement. This is because I believe that yes, the huge contribution of women to the war effort was most certainly the factor that gave the women’s suffrage campaign the final push that it needed for the cause to be granted, but I also believe that were it not for the sizeable amount of work towards the campaign done by many groups, namely the Women’s Freedom League, the NUWSS and the WSPU, then this final advance would never have happened.