Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain, 1830-1918

The book focuses on the key areas necessary to explain the development of women’s role in nineteenth and early-twentieth century British society and develops themes explored in the Nineteenth Century British Society series.

The first chapter considers the relationship between different approaches that have evolved to explain the role of women in history. This is followed by a chapter that looks at the ways in which women were represented in the nineteenth century in terms of the female body, sexuality and the notion of ‘separate spheres’. Chapter 3 explores the relationship between women and work and how that relationship developed. Although women’s suffrage has had a symbolic importance for generations of feminists, the campaign for the vote has obscured the broader agitations for women’s rights during the nineteenth century and was, in terms of its impact before 1914, far less significant. Before the 1880s, the focus was not on winning the vote and the demand for parliamentary suffrage was only one of a range of campaigns. These are explored in Chapter 4.
The following two chapters look at the ways in which women actively sought access to the public sphere through political activity and demands for suffrage reform. Women’s interest in securing access to political rights was not limited to the campaign for parliamentary suffrage. Women, from working- and middle-classes were involved in political protest such as the Chartist movement and in campaigns against slavery and the Corn Laws. The growing powers given to various levels of local government also attracted their keen interest and in the arena of local party politics women were to play a prominent role as early as the 1870s.
It was not until the first decade of the twentieth century that the suffrage movement achieved widespread national recognition largely through the activities of the militant Suffragettes. The nature of the suffrage campaign is considered in Chapter 7 while reactions to this from anti-suffragists, political parties and different social groups form the core of Chapter 8. The impact of the First World War on women generally and the suffrage campaign in particular is discussed in Chapter 9. The book ends with an examination of the notion of ‘borderlands’ as a conceptual framework for discussing women in nineteenth century Britain and the ways in which their personal, ideological, economic, legal and political status developed and changed.

This book will be published in print media in the middle of 2012 and this will shortly be followed by a Kindle version.

The working classes: A transition in work 1830-1850

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of work in working-class life. Work helped determine two fundamental elements of working-class existence: the ways in which workers spent many, if not most of their waking hours; and the amounts of money they had to their disposal. Work also determined most other aspects of working-class life already considered: the standards of living they enjoyed; standards of health; the type of housing they lived in; the nature of the family and neighbourhood life; the ways in which leisure time was spent and the social, political and other values that were adopted.[1]

The swing away from domestic forms of production can be roughly explained by three developments: the growth of population, the extension of enclosure with a consequent reduction in demand for rural labour and the advent of mechanised production boosting productivity and fostering the growth of new towns and cities. The result was a change in the structure of the labour market. However, this was not a linear progression to large-scale factory production and did not necessarily entail the deskilling of labour, though there were notable exceptions.

The enclosure of common lands had a profound impact on the livelihood of rural workers and their families. It led to a contraction of resources for many workers and a greater reliance on earnings. The spread of enclosure pushed rural labourers on to the labour market in a search for work that was made the more frenzied by falling farm prices and wages between 1815-1835, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic war. The result of the growth in labour supply and agricultural depression was the collapse of farm service in the south and east of the country. It had been customary for farm workers to be hired for a year, to enter service in another household and to live with another family, receiving food, clothes, board and a small annual wage in return for work, only living out when they wished to marry.  Added to this was the development of factory-based textile production that had a significant effect on the other source of earned income for rural workers: outwork. Different parts of the country were associated with different types of product: lace-making round Nottingham, stocking-knitting in Leicester, spinning and weaving of cotton and wool in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The appearance of the mills damaged the status and security of some very skilled branches of outwork. Many rural households found themselves thrown into poverty as such work became increasingly scarce and available only at pitifully low rates of pay. The fate of the handloom weavers, stocking-frame knitters and silk weavers in the 1830s and 1840s, all reflected the impact of technological change on the distribution of work[2]. Textiles were not the only industry to experience such structural changes. In both town and country, mechanisation had a marked impact on a wide variety of employment and the position of some skilled workers was undermined while the demand for new skills grew.

Urban workers had always been more reliant on wages than had rural labourers. Pre-industrial towns had tended to be commercial markets rather than centres of manufacture and employment there had been more specialised than elsewhere. Small units of production in which worked skilled artisans, providing local services and goods rather than commodities for export operated largely on a domestic basis through frequently under the control of the craft guilds. These stipulated modes of recruitment and training and the quality of products and founded the vocabulary of the rights of ‘legal’ or ‘society’ men who worked in ‘legal’ shops that permeated craft unions in the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century saw the position of the skilled urban artisan increasingly under threat from semi-skilled and less well trained workers.

The Elizabethan Statute of Artificers (or Apprentices) 1563 provided a legal framework of craft regulation but had fallen into abeyance long before its apprenticeship clauses were repealed in 1811. Under the old system of apprenticeship, the pupil was formally indentured at 14-16 and joined a master’s house for a period traditionally specified as seven years before being recognised as a journeyman, qualified to practice the trade. It was also usual for journeymen to ‘live in’, entitled to bed, board and wages in return to work, only moving out on marriage. Often journeymen tramped the country in search of work in part to extend their experience and knowledge of their trade but also to escape increasingly uncertain employment prospects in their immediate locality.[3] To become a master the journeyman had to produce his ‘masterpiece’, demonstrating his mastery of the skills of the specific trade. From the early nineteenth century fewer apprentices were completing their indentures and journeymen’s wages were falling, both signs that employers were no longer bothered about hiring only men who had served their time. This led to a dilution in the labour force and an increased blurring of the boundaries between ‘society’ and ‘non-society’ men, a situation made worse by the mechanisation of production that required fewer skills than handwork.

The nature of training for skilled work changed; apprenticeships were shortened and concentrated on specific skills rather than on an extensive understanding of all aspects of production. Lads worked alongside journeymen rather than being attached to a master’s household with various adverse results. The new system bore heavily on apprentices’ families, who frequently still paid for indentures while the apprentice lived at home and could expect little or no wages for his efforts until his time was served. The old stipulated ratios between journeymen and boys were increasingly ignored and apprentices became a cheap alternative for adult labour thus depressing the adult labour market. Such developments were resented by the journeymen expected to train recruits, souring relations and often making training uncooperative. The fate of boys was often instant dismissal as soon as they were old enough to command an adult rate.

Such practices were more common during depressed times. This abuse of apprenticeship provoked sporadic industrial disputes as skilled workers tried to protect their position and to prevent their trade from being flooded (or diluted) by excess labour. The independence of their ‘aristocratic’ status was upheld through the rhetoric of custom and the invention of ‘tradition’ to sanction and legitimise current practice. This excluded employers and market calculations from the opaque world of custom, tradition, craft mystery and skill, a separate culture upheld by secrecy, theatrical ceremony and, when necessary, ritualised violence. Through these means skilled workers defended their position at the ‘frontier of control’.

Reduced to wage-earning proletarians without rights to the materials and product of their labour, skilled workers fought hard to retain some control over the ‘labour process’ and to defend their workplace autonomy against the new time and labour discipline favoured by political economists, preachers and employers. Even in new forms of work organisations, they often succeeded in recomposing skills and safeguarding their status, despite ‘deskilling’ technology and increased division of labour. But in defending or reconstructing skilled status, their actions were divisive: not just a line drawn against employers but against unfair or unskilled competition in the labour market. Skill as property became skill as patriarchy, an appropriate that left women defenceless and marginalised against the degradation of their labour.

The most obvious impact of industrialisation was found in the more intense and strictly disciplined nature of work in those industries transformed by the new technology: textiles, coal-mining, metal-processing and engineering. Skilled workers may have been able to hold the ‘frontier of control’ in relation to their skills as property but they were unable to prevent, though perhaps delay, the inexorable march of discipline and compulsion within the workplace. None of the convivial culture of the workshop was allowed to interrupt the pace of factory work. Early mills were manned by convict and pauper labour (mostly children) because the regularity of work was alien to the adult population used to a greater degree of autonomy in conducting their working lives. The higher wages available in factories provided insufficient compensation for this loss of ‘freedom’. Impoverished handloom weavers would send their daughters to work on the power looms but resisted the prospect themselves. Hours in the early factories were probably no longer than those in the domestic trades but what made it far less acceptable was the mind-crushing tedium of the work involved, the loss of public feast days and holidays and, for middle-class commentators, the physical consequences of long hours and the appalling conditions in the factory towns.

The growth of labour market conditions in the nineteenth century makes it quite impossible to make clear distinctions between the employed, the unemployed, the underemployed, the self-employed and the economically inactive. Subcontracting was rife, notably in the clothing trade where middlemen ‘sweated’ domestic women to earn a profit. The ‘slop’ end of the fashion and furnishing trades competed frantically for such orders as were available at almost any price. Casualism became more visible towards 1900 as cities spread in size. Short-term engagements and casual employment were particularly associated with the docks and the construction industries. The casual labour of the old East End was trapped within an economy of declining trades. Conditions of employment deteriorated. By the early 1870s London’s shipbuilding had slumped beyond the point of recovery and by the 1880s most heavy engineering, iron founding and metal work had gone the same way. Competition from provincial furniture, clothing and footwear factories could only be met by reducing labour costs and led to the increasing importance of sweated trades.

---

[1] John Benson The Working Class in Britain 1850-1939, Longman, 1989, pp. 9-38 is the best introduction to this issue. Patrick Joyce (ed.), The historical meanings of work, CUP, 1987 is an excellent collection containing a seminal introduction by the editor. Patrick Joyce 'Work' in F.M.L. Thompson, (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950: volume 2 People and their environment, CUP, 1990, pp. 131-194 is a short summary of recent research.

[2] See Duncan Bythell The Handloom Weavers, CUP, 1969 and The Sweated Trades, Batsford, 1978 for a detailed discussion of this issue.

[3] See E.J. Hobsbawm 'The tramping artisan' in his Labouring Men, Weidenfeld, 1964, pp. 34-63 and E.P. Thompson The Making of the English Working Class, Gollancz, 1963, Penguin, 1968 and 'Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism', first published in Past and Present, no.38 (December 1967), reprinted and revised in Customs in Common, Merlin, 1991, pp. 352-403.

Public Health 1832-1854

During the 1840s there were two contradictory trends in matters of social policy. On the one hand there was a tendency to extend public control and, on the other, a tendency to call a halt to further change. The public health movement had to operate against the pressures produced by these opposing forces, pressures that in the end brought Chadwick down and ended a stage in the history of social policy. Public health was the fourth major area of policy, along with the poor law, factory reform and constabulary reform, with which Chadwick's name was connected. The campaign bore the characteristic stamp of Chadwick's mind:

• It was constructively based on a broad conception of the issues involved.
• Chadwick propounded sanitary policies that tackled all parts of the problem and left no loose ends.
• He thought out an administrative structure at both central and local levels that should be intelligently related to basic environmental and geographical factors.
• This comprehensiveness and broad planning won him a number of enemies. Any of such plans would antagonise some powerful interests. The whole policy was bound to offend a whole legion.
• Nor were the plans free from Chadwick's characteristics dogmatism and they showed his usual inability to compromise or to modify his ideas.

Policy development went through several phases between the late 1830s and 1848.

Awakening public interest

Enquiries had been made by Arnott, Southwood Smith and Kay-Shuttleworth into the sanitary conditions in East London in 1839. Chadwick's own Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain was produced in 1842. It was the result of two further years’ exhaustive work and it put the whole discussion of public sanitary policy onto an entirely new footing.

Chadwick's basic ideas

Chadwick's ideas dominated policy up to 1854. He believed that disease was carried by impurities in the atmosphere and that the great problem was to get rid of impurities before they could decompose. The key to resolving the whole problem was the provision of a sufficient supply of pure water driven through pipes at high pressure. This would provide both drinking water and make it easier to cleanse houses and streets. Manure could be collected when it left the town and used as fertiliser in the surrounding fields. It was the very completeness of his solution that presented many problems:

1. Many water companies were in existence but they normally provided water only on certain days a week and at certain times. They did not provide it in either the quantity or at the pressure that Chadwick desired.
2. Many houses in poorer districts had no water supply at all and no proper means of sewage disposal.
3. Where sewers did exist the levels were often very badly regulated. Chadwick wished to replace the large brick-arched constructions with smaller egg-shaped types developed by John Roe.

In addition to his first two basic ideas -- the atmospheric theory of infection and the cyclical theory of water supply and drainage -- Chadwick maintained that proper central direction of sanitary planning should be combined with efficient local organisation, an idea parallel to his views on poor law and police.

Chadwick's 1842 Report

The 1842 Sanitary Report was complemented by another report of 1843 on interments in towns that exposed the terrible conditions of over-crowded graveyards of London. These reports made a deep impression on public opinion and some 30,000 copies were initially printed. They were followed by a Royal Commission on the state of towns, by a good deal of propagandist activity through the Health of Towns Association founded in December 1844, and eventually by the passage of the Public Health Act 1848. Several points stand out in the Sanitary Report:

1. Members and officials of existing commissions of sewers were generally examined in an unsympathetic, even hostile way.
2. There were two authoritative statements of the views of reformers, one by Southwood Smith from the scientific and medical viewpoint, the other by Thomas Hawksley from an engineering viewpoint.
3. Complementing Hawksley's evidence, there was evidence from other professional men about the importance of properly made plans and surveys as the pre-requisite for sound planning.

By the middle of the 1840s the local state was beginning to intervene in towns and several of the larger towns obtained private Acts to dealing with nuisances. In 1847 William Duncan became the Medical Officer for Liverpool, the first appointment in Britain. By now the public health debate had polarised into those who favoured reform [The Clean Party] and those against it, 'The Dirty Party' or 'Muckabites'.  The central State did intervened in 1846 with the Nuisances Removal Act and particularly in the 1848 Public Health Act. The prime motivation behind both pieces of legislation was for combating the imminent cholera outbreak. The 1848 Act began the process of breaking down laissez-faire attitudes. It

• Established a Central Board of Health with a five-year mandate based at Gwydir House in London with three Commissioners [Lord Morpeth, Lord Shaftesbury and Chadwick, with Southwood Smith as Medical Officer].
• Local Boards of Health could be established if 10 percent of ratepayers petitioned the Central Board or would be set up in towns where the death rate was higher than 23 per thousand.
• The Local Boards of Health would take over the powers of water companies and drainage commissioners. It would levy a rate and had the power to appoint a salaried Medical Officer. They also had the power to pave streets etc. but this was not compulsory.

There were several important weaknesses in the Act:

1. The lifespan of the Central Board was limited to five years.
2. It was permissive in character and many towns did not take advantage of the Act. The large cities by-passed the legislation by obtaining private Acts of Parliament to carry out improvements and so avoided central interference.
3. The Act was based on preventative measures and was therefore narrow in outlook. Such measures did bring about improvements but Chadwick paid no attention to contagionist theories and so alienated the medical profession.
4. The Act did not legislate for London, which remained an administrative nightmare.

The scale of the General Board's operations was modest. By July 1853 only 164 places, including Birmingham, had been brought under the Act. Many large towns stood aside having taken separate powers under local acts: Leeds in 1842, Manchester in 1844 and Liverpool in 1846. In Lancashire only 26 townships took advantage of the Act and by 1858 only 400,000 of the county's 2.5 million people came under Boards of Health.

The litmus test for the success or failure of the new policies took place in London. A new Metropolitan Commission of Sewers had been set up in December 1847 of which Chadwick was a leading member. From the outset there were bitter rivalries in the Commission between him and the representatives of the old sewer commissions and the parish vestries. In 1850 Chadwick produced a new scheme for the water supply and for a system of publicly controlled cemeteries. Both schemes aroused a host of opponents and both schemes were abandoned. The Treasury refused to advance money for the purchase of private cemeteries. The Metropolitan Water Supply Act 1852 left the whole provision in the hands of water companies.

By 1852 hopes for any comprehensive reform in London had been dashed and there was growing opposition to the General Board in the country as a whole. Lord Morpeth was replaced by Lord Seymour who was hostile to Chadwick. Feelings against the Board and Chadwick in particular rose orchestrated by The Times. The Central Board should have ended in 1853 but was given a year's extension [1853-4] because of a renewal of cholera. Chadwick knew that the 'Dirty Party' was intent on his destruction. He produced a report on what had been achieved but again criticised the various vested interests. Hostility in Parliament and from The Times and Punch focused on Chadwick who was seen as trying to bullying the nation into cleanliness. It was Seymour, who left office in 1852, who demanded the removal of the present Board members and successfully carried an amendment against the government's bill to reorganise the Board. Chadwick resigned and never held public office again. The Central Board was officially abolished in August 1854 but was replaced by a new Board of Health [itself abolished in 1858]. This was the end and on 12 August 1854 Chadwick ceased to be a commissioner. Though he lived until 1890 this marked the end of his active career.

Women get the vote: What happened during the War?

Why did the wartime government conclude that women should be given the vote? There are five main reasons why this took place.

1. Women’s suffrage slipped off the political agenda on the outbreak of war, but it reappeared as a bi-product of concern over the male electorate. The war obliged millions of people to leave their homes to join the armed forces or for employment. Existing rules meant that voters had to be resident for a year. As a result, many serving soldiers became ineligible to vote. This mattered to politicians because the life of the existing parliament ran out in December 1915 and they anticipated that a general election would be held during the war. The need to restore male voters to the electoral registers re-opened the pre-war debate about electoral reform.
2. The balance in Parliament swung towards female suffrage. The end of Asquith’s premiership in December 1916 brought in the supportive Lloyd George. The resultant Coalition government may be regarded as useful in breaking the deadlock and promoting a compromise solution. Certainly, it brought into office suffragists such as Arthur Henderson (Labour) and Lord Robert Cecil (Conservative) to reinforce Liberals such as Sir John Simon.
3. The suspension of the suffrage campaigns and women’s contribution to the war effort made it easier for anti-suffragists like Asquith to retreat from their entrenched position without loss of face. In broad terms people lost interest in women’s suffrage and this was recognised by both militant and non-militant suffragists. The attitude of politicians towards women’s work and the expressions of sympathy that occurred can be seen in a rather more cynical than altruistic light. It was clear that government expected women to give way to men in relation to employment. Despite abandoning their anti-suffragism men like Asquith privately continued to see women in politics in a very negative light. MPs recognised that women were going to acquire the vote if not immediately after the war then very soon after. They were not prepared to alienate potential supporters. Few anti-suffragists were prepared to die in the last ditch in defence of their views. Pragmatism prevailed.
4. The setting up of the coalition government in 1915 meant that there was less division within parties, allowing an all-party agreement to be made and removed fears that one particular party would benefit from the measure.
5. There was an international trend towards women’s suffrage and this put pressure on the government to act. Women’s suffrage was not implemented on a federal basis in the United States until 1920 though it had been adopted in a growing number of states since 1869. New Zealand had given women the vote in 1893 and Australia followed suit in 1902.

The issue of female suffrage remained in the background until August 1916 when the question of a new voting register was raised. All agreed on the need for a new register. The NUWSS, while insisting that it did not which to dissipate the government’s energies by a controversial argument stated that it would not stand by and allow voting rights to be extended to thousands of serving men while nothing was done for serving women. For the first time, Asquith agreed. ‘Votes for women’ became a subject of open debate and this time, it had clear support from the public, politicians and the press.

Manhood suffrage and limited women’s suffrage were introduced and carried as part of the domestic reconstruction that began to be an important concern for government in 1916. An Act of 1915 extended the life of the existing Parliament from five to six years and postponed the revision of the electoral register on the ground that one composed in wartime would be unreliable. The Parliament and Local Elections Act of 1916 extended the existing Parliament again for a further eight months and another Act of that year provided for a new electoral register to be drawn up. A growing number of MPs believed that there should also be an extension of the franchise and a redistribution of seats arrived at by inter-party agreement. On 14^th August 1916, Asquith, in a speech to the Commons on the Parliament and Local Election Bill, implied that he was now turning from habitual opposition to support for women’s suffrage. Walter Long, Conservative President of the Local Government Board, soon after also declared his conversion of the female vote. Nevertheless, Asquith ruled out the prospect of a bill for women’s suffrage during the war. However, by October 1916, the Cabinet had (on the suggestion of Walter Long) placed the whole question of the franchise, registration and constituency reform in the hands of an inter-party conference.

The gathering was known as the Speaker’s Conference, as it was chaired by the Speaker of the House of Commons, James Lowther. An opponent of women’s suffrage when he had ruled against amendments to the Franchise and Registration Bill in 1913, Lowther was now more conciliatory largely because he did not want a return to the militancy of the pre-war years. Apart from the chairman, there were 34 other members of the conference: 13 Conservative (11 MPs and 2 peers), 13 Liberal (10 MPs and 3 peers), four Irish Home Rulers and four representing the Labour Party. It began work in 12^th October 1916 meeting twenty-six times and produced a comprehensive set of proposals on 26^th January 1917. Towards the end of their work, the committee members addressed the issue of women’s suffrage and voted (15 to 6) in favour of making some sort of concession. They narrowly rejected (12 to 10) equal franchise with men and in order to avoid creating a female majority among voters recommended that women over the age of either thirty or thirty-five and on the local government electoral register (or whose husbands were on the electoral register) should be given the vote.

The Speaker’s Report was in Lloyd George’s hands by 27^th January 1917 but it was two months later, on 26^th March that the Cabinet decided to support the introduction of a bill embodying the recommendations. The Speaker’s Conference presented women’s organisations with a fait accompli. It took place behind closed doors and all Millicent Fawcett could do was to lead a deputation representing 22 suffrage societies to meet the minister responsible. On 28^th March 1917, Asquith opened the Commons debate on the Speaker’s Report by moving that a bill be introduced in accordance with its recommendations. His clear public support for the reform was significant coming from one who had been a noted opponent of it. The reasons he gave for his advocacy included women’s war war-work, the right of women to participate directly in matters of post-war reconstruction that would affect them and the absence during the war of “that detestable campaign that disfigured the annals of political agitation in this country”. The Commons approved the introduction of the bill by 341 votes to 62. The Labour Party and the suffrage societies opposed the limited concessions recommended by the Speaker’s Conference but agreed to support a Bill if the age limit for women was lowered to 30. This concession was granted. After the first reading of the bill in the Commons on 16^th May, the second reading passed on 23^rd May by 329 votes to 40. On a free vote on 19^th June 1917, the Commons approved the women’s clause by 387 to 57 votes. This incorporated over eight million, largely married women. This allayed Liberal and Labour fears and the Conservatives found it easier to accept the women’s vote as part of a broader package. The remaining parliamentary hurdles were crossed (the expected opposition in the House of Lords did not materialise) and the Bill became law on 5^th February 1918.

The Representation of the People Act (the ‘fourth’ Reform Act) gave the vote to women over the age of 30 who were householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5 or graduates of British universities. MPs rejected the idea of granting the vote to women on the same terms as men. This obviously was a breakthrough, but critics of the Act have pointed to the fact that many women who contributed to the war effort were under 30 and from the working class. Why had they not received the vote? In the words of Martin Pugh, it was an ‘unspectacular victory’. It was not until 1928 that the vote was extended to women on the same ground as men. Women had their first opportunity to vote in a General Election in December 1918. Several of the women involved in the suffrage campaign stood for Parliament. Only one, Constance Markiewicz, standing for Sinn Fein, was elected. However, as an Irish Nationalist, she refused to take her seat in the House of Commons.

The politicians created a female electorate in 1918 dominated by married women and mothers upwards of thirty years of age. Once the new system had settled down it emerged that women comprised 42-43 per cent of all British voters. The reforms of 1918 scarcely amounted to a revolution but they did result in some significant adjustments in the British political system. Women were allowed to serve, as MPs and seventeen women stood, none successfully, for election in 1918. Soon each party had its own women’s branches, annual women’s conferences and a hierarchy of professional women organisers. By 1929, the Conservatives claimed to have over a million female members and the Labour party 250,000 to 300,000.

Beyond 1918

After the passing of the 1918 Act, the NUWSS and WSPU disbanded. A new organisation called the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship was established. As well as advocating the same voting rights as men, the organisation also campaigned for equal pay, fairer divorce laws and an end to the discrimination against women in the professions.

In 1919, Parliament passed the Sex Disqualification Removal Act, which made it illegal to exclude women from jobs because of their sex. Women could now become solicitors, barristers and magistrates. Later that year, Nancy Astor became the first woman in England to become a MP when she won Plymouth in a by-election. Other women were also elected over the next few years. In 1923, Margaret Bondfield was elected as Labour MP for Northampton. When Ramsay McDonald became Prime Minister in 1924, he appointed Bondfield as parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Labour. Five years later, she became the first woman in history to gain a place in the British Cabinet.

A bill was introduced in March 1928 to give women the vote on the same terms as men. There was little opposition in Parliament to the bill and it became law on 2^nd July 1928. As a result, all women over the age of 21 could now vote in elections. Many of the women who had fought for this right were now dead including Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Barbara Bodichon, Emily Davies, Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy, Constance Lytton and Emmeline Pankhurst. Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the NUWSS during the campaign for the vote, was still alive and had the pleasure of attending Parliament to see the vote take place. That night she wrote in her diary: “It is almost exactly 61 years ago since I heard John Stuart Mill introduce his suffrage amendment to the Reform Bill on May 20^th 1867. So I have had extraordinary good luck in having seen the struggle from the beginning.”

Women get the vote: the suffrage movement during the War

According to the traditional view, an important element in the granting of the vote to women in 1918 was the stance taken by the different suffrage groups during the war[1]. By acting responsibly and supporting the war effort, it is argued, the suffrage groups demonstrated than women were mature and responsible enough to gain the vote. However, to suggest that the decision taken by the leaders of the WSPU to support the government’s prosecution of the war was echoed by all factions of the women’s movement is to misrepresent the nature of the movement, its membership and its work. Not all suffrage groups did support the war effort and the main suffrage groups that did so suffered splits over their patriotic stance.

To Victorian and Edwardian women, especially those of the middle class raised on the concept of ‘duty’, an immediate response was required from the suffrage societies. Many suffrage societies knew where their ‘duty’ lay and directed their resources to the war effort. Such a response might have been thought predictable from the NUWSS. That everyone expected the war to be over by Christmas might be considered to have influenced the NUWSS membership (consulted by post in August) who agreed to a suspension of political activity. Within the WSPU, both Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst adopted a highly patriotic stance, calling on their members to suspend militant action and to support the British war effort. The Home Secretary quickly offered to release the suffragette prisoners and the Pankhursts took the opportunity of the war to escape without any loss of face from the impasse by suspending militancy. The WSPU then worked in collaboration with the government particularly, after 1915, with Lloyd George’s Ministry of Munitions publicising and coordinating female recruitment into the workforce. In July 1915, the government gave the WSPU a grant of £2,000 to finance the so-called ‘Great Procession of Women’, a march through London designed to heighten awareness of the need for women to actively support the war effort.

Not all WSPU members supported the leadership stance. As a result, two different groups split from the WSPU to form their own suffrage organisations: the Suffragettes of the Women’s Social and Political Unions (SWSPU) in October 1915 and the Independent Women’s Social and Political Unions (IWSPU) in March 1916. In addition, the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) led by Sylvia Pankhurst was highly critical of the WSPU leadership. During the war, the ELFS campaigned against the war and, as well as providing relief for many working class people in London, demanded the implementation of a socialist programme.

The NUWSS was also divided between those who supported the war (including Millicent Fawcett) and those who opposed it. Millicent Fawcett’s view eventually prevailed and in the spring of 1915, a major split occurred in the group over her refusal to allow NUWSS delegates to attend a peace conference for women at The Hague. The pacifist members of the group, including most of the national officers split away and formed the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Unlike the WSPU, the NUWSS continued to press for female suffrage during the war, as well as providing relief work. When the issue of electoral reform was raised in the summer of 1916, the NUWSS immediately began to lobby for the inclusion of female suffrage.

Other women, either as individuals or as groups, were prominent in campaigns on behalf of women, especially from the working class, during the war years.  Women were involved in the development of a peace campaign[2]. Links between feminism, suffrage, peace and internationalism had long informed women’s networks and in wartime, there was a heightened recognition of the divisiveness of an ideology that sought to embody the power of the state in force and militarism. The debate for suffrage women in 1914 centred on the combination of tactics that would best sustain the Cause during the war. For many, the peace issue was of significance in throwing the suffrage question into sharper relief. Peace groups regarded it as essential to triumph over the revival of the anti-suffragist argument arising from force. This argument suggested that the power of the state lay in its capacity for physical force. It also defined citizenship as including only those individuals strong enough to bear arms in defence of the state. Women’s supposed incapacity for such a role meant that they had no right to the franchise. The Peace campaigners argued that women should be enfranchised as soon as possible to prevent such conflicts. Socialist feminists, committed to international solidarity and the class struggle, had a double motivation to resist the tide of war. Divisions within the women’s movement followed as the support given to the war effort by some suffrage groups could not be tolerated by those members whose pacifism was an integral part of their socialist beliefs. In 1915, for example, Helen Swanwick resigned from her position on the NUWSS executive because of the Union’s wartime policy.

Some suffrage groups, despite the demands of war, believed it essential to sustain their suffrage propaganda work. The three largest active organisations were the Women’s Freedom League (WFL), the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) and the United Suffragists (US). All three originated in expulsions from the WSPU: the WFL in 1907, the United Suffragists in 1912 and Sylvia Pankhurst’s ELFS in 1914. At a special meeting on 10^th August 1914, the WFL “re-affirmed the urgency of keeping the suffrage flag flying” and the need “to organise a Women’s Suffrage National Aid Corps whose chief object would be to render help to the women and children of the nation”. Working closely with the WFL, the ELFS reflected the socialist attitudes of its founder, Sylvia Pankhurst. The ELFS refused to compromise or sacrifice the needs of working class women whose lives would inevitably become harder because of the war. Anticipating the nature of wartime problems, the ELFS argued for government control of food supplies, the provision of work for men and women at equal rates of pay and reserved places for working women on government committees dealing with food, prices, employment and relief. The Forward Cymric Suffrage Union, with its network of branches in Welsh and English counties as well as 28 branches in London also pointed out the need for women to be involved in the government of the nation. The FCSU worked closely with the ELFS and intended to combine relief work for women and children in Wales with its suffrage activities. Two Irish societies that continued their involvement were the Belfast Women’s Suffrage Society and the militant Irish Women’s Franchise League. In addition to these and many other established groups that continued the franchise struggle, four new organisations emerged. The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom originated at the Women’s International Conference at The Hague in April 1915. The British branch was founded in September 1915 because of the discontent of a number of suffrage women at the failure of several peace initiatives. In addition to its peace work, the WILPF also supported the work of the hard core of suffrage organisations in their wartime activities.

The Suffragettes of the Women’s Social and Political Union (SWSPU) that held its initial meeting in October and the Independent Women’s Social and Political Union (IWSPU), formed in March 1916 were both established after divisions within the Pankhurst’s WSPU. In August 1914, Mrs Pankhurst circulated the membership to the effect that the union’s activities would be suspended. Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst and a handful of ‘loyal’ WSPU members subsequently began working with Lloyd George on nationalist propaganda. The Pankhursts’ activities came in for increasing criticism from WSPU members and at a meeting at Westminster in October 1915, there was criticism of the activities of WSPU officials and their abandonment of suffrage work. The meeting also called for the production of WSPU audited accounts. A second meeting on 25^th November accused Mrs Pankhurst of participating in activities that were outside the union’s remit and of using WSPU assets and staff in the process. Both Emmeline and Christabel responded in characteristically autocratic form. Critics like Charlotte Despard of the WFL and Dora Montefiore, an ex-WSPU member were scathing in their attacks on the now exposed private ambitions of the Pankhursts for power and political status. What was left of the WSPU membership then formed two new groups, the IWSPU and the SWSPU.

The last new organisation of this period was the Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women’s Organisations (SJCIWO) founded on 11^th February 1916 at a meeting called by the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL). The call for closer co-operation among women’s groups representing female industrial workers originally came from the Women’s Labour League. Initially, the SJCIWO comprised the WLL, the Women’s Co-operative Guild, the Railway Women’s Guild, the National Federation of Women Workers and the WTUL. Its three aims were to draw up a list of women willing to become representatives on government committees to protect women’s interests; to devise a policy for Labour women on these committees to assist them in their work; and, to initiate joint propaganda campaigns with the rest of the women’s movement on subjects of concern to industrial women. These aims allowed the SJCIWO to dovetail its work with the active suffrage societies’ campaigns. The WDL rightly said that the SJCWIO had adopted the role of ‘watchdog’ for women’s affairs during the war.

Minority groups learn to develop survival strategies and manipulate situations to advantage. It seems that this was exactly what the women’s movement did during the war. This meant that new links were forged that was intended to extend the feminist network. NUWSS branches created new alliances with groups working on women’s industrial issues. Old allegiances were strengthened as suffrage societies and women’s industrial groups worked together on committees such as the NUWSS’s Women’s Interest Committee. The movement’s handling of industrial circumstances to enhance its public standing and win concessions for women by refusing to concede to the status quo was yet another instance of political opportunism.

In August 1914, the suffrage societies had to make difficult decisions. The duty of supporting the nation while sustaining loyalty to relations and friends involved in the fighting was not an easy one to dispute and vied with suffrage women’s loyalty to personal political agendas. Whatever accommodations were made and whatever combinations of allegiance and action resulted, the continuity of the women’s movement was never threatened, nor the suffrage campaign abandoned. Women may have got the vote in 1918 because of political manoeuvring or as a ‘reward’ for their war effort but historians should not neglect the wartime experiences and activities of the suffrage societies.

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[1] For the suffrage movements during the war, see and Sandra Stanley Holton Feminism and democracy: women’s suffrage and reform politics in Britain 1900-1918, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pages 116-150 and Cheryl Law Suffrage and Power: The Women’s Movement 1918-1928, I. B. Tauris, 1997, pages 13-41.

[2] On this, see Anne Wiltsher Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War, Pandora Press, 1985 and Jill Liddington The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain since 1920, Virago, 1989.

Women get the vote: What role did women play during the War?

Historians have described the First World War as the nation’s first experience of ‘total war’. By this, they mean a war in which society is organised in such a way that all available resources are channelled into the war effort. As a result, total war has an impact on the lives of everybody in society, not simply those directly involved in the fighting. Some of the experiences of the First World War that can be said to have made a social, cultural and psychological impact are as follows.

• The emotional trauma suffered by many men who were forced (because of conscription) to serve in the Armed Forces.
• There was widespread bereavement because of the death of family and friends.
• There were changes in diet and habits resulting from food rationing.
• People lived in a society in which government propaganda and government controls were more extensive than in pre-war society.
• The new experience that many upper and middle class women gained from taking up paid employment for the first time.

The social, cultural and emotional impact of the war was such that it has led some historians to argue that the period after 1918 witnessed a fundamental realignment of moral and social attitudes.  Stanislaw Andreski developed the idea of a ‘military participation ratio’ in the early 1950s[1]. He argued that, after a period of war, government rewards proportionately those sections of society on whose support it has depended. The greater the contribution made by the middle classes in a war, for example, the more likely a post-war government is to pass reforms to address middle class needs. The more ‘total’ the war and, therefore, the greater the involvement of the working class, the more likely that there is a post-war process of social levelling by removing class inequalities. According to Andreski, it was because the First World War was so large in scale and involved, for the first time, virtually all sections of society that Britain became a democracy in the 1918 and 1928 Representation of the Peoples Acts. The war itself was instrumental in providing the environment in which democracy could emerge.

Andreski’s theory has been challenged in a number of ways. First, he placed too great an emphasis on military participation suggesting that this was the key to post-war social levelling. Arguably, the most significant social change resulting from the war was the changed role and status of women. Yet, women’s direct military participation was, in Andreski’s terms, limited. Second, the idea of the ‘ratio’ implies that social change can be isolated and precisely measured. However, many of the changes that can be seen in British society in the post-war period can be traced back before 1914. Indeed, it could be argued that the war alone was responsible for few of the social changes that took place. Some historians suggest that, rather than initiating changes; the war accelerated and intensified changes that were already underway. Finally, Andreski’s theory has been seen as an oversimplification. Other societies, hardly affected by the First World War, showed similar patterns of development after 1918.

A different approach has been adopted by Arthur Marwick. He identifies four ‘dimensions’ that, he claims, help us to understand the complex inter-relationship between society and its experience of war. First, he identifies the destructive and disruptive dimension, the notion that destruction in the war created an impulse towards rebuilding after it. Second, there is a test dimension. This is the idea that wars place society under a great deal of pressure (that is, they provide a ‘test’) and society has to adapt to avoid defeat. Third, there is a participation dimension. This revolves round the idea that total war requires the involvement of under-privileged groups and their participation in the war changes attitudes towards them, bringing the possibility of social change after the war. Finally, the psychological dimension. War encourages intensity of emotions (for example, it encouraged hatred of the enemy) that stimulate a new cultural response.  The critical question is whether these ideas help to provide an explanation for why some women got the vote in 1918. Andreski’s theory of ‘direct military participation’ does not seem to relate directly to the experience of women who were non-combatants. If the notion is stretched to include those involved directly in the war effort, for example by taking over jobs so men could fight in the trenches, then Andreski may provide a possible explanation for women getting the vote in 1918. However, this only works if those women directly involved in war work got the vote in 1918. The 1918 Act gave the vote largely to middle class women not to the working class who made up the bulk of working women. Marwick’s dimension may provide a better explanation of why women got the vote in 1918, especially his emphasis on continuity between pre- and post-war experiences.

It has long been assumed that the most important indirect effect of the war was to bring about a fundamental change in attitudes towards women and their economic and social roles. This argument suggests that the vital contribution women made to the war effort opened the eyes of men to their capabilities and revealed them as citizens in every sense. There is certainly widespread newspaper and film evidence on women’s work that is very flattering. However, historians have increasingly come to regard much of the contemporary record as largely ephemeral. By 1918, the press had already begun to lose its enthusiasm for women workers who were now being urged to surrender their jobs to returning soldiers. By the 1920s, it was clear that there had not been a fundamental reappraisal of the role of the sexes and women were increasingly excluded from employment by the combined actions of employers, government and male-dominated trade unions. The extent to which the role and status of women changed during the after the First World War is at the heart of the debate about the nature and extent of change brought about by the war.

Some historians have argued that there is a direct link between the economic role of women during the war and the granting of the vote to most women over thirty in the 1918 Representation of the People Act. It was because women made a contribution to the war effort, they argue, that they won the right to vote after the war. Arthur Marwick argues “it is difficult to see how women could have achieved so much in anything like a similar time span without the unique circumstances arising from the war”[2]. Other historians argue that such an interpretation underplays the significance of the suffrage campaigns before 1914. Martin Pugh, for example, places greater emphasis on continuities and claims that the nature of the pre-war suffrage movement determined the shaped of legislation in 1918. He maintains, “It is significant that, where women who undertook male tasks during the war have left a record of their feelings, they seem to have taken in for granted that they were stepping in on a purely temporary basis and they vacated their jobs at the end of the war without protest. This is not surprising in view of the relatively conservative, middle-class nature of the pre-1914 women’s movement that had confined itself to the narrow question of the franchise and neglected the wider social objectives that the vote might have helped them to attain. In this light, either the grant of the franchise in 1918 to women over 30 who were local government electors themselves or wives of parliamentary electors is understandable. Members of Parliament were determined to keep women in a minority among voters, and to enfranchise only those who, as relatively mature family women, seemed likely to make up a stable, loyal section of the community.[3]“

By November 1918, 947,000 women were employed in the munitions industry. This was unpleasant and potentially dangerous work and more than 300 lost their lives because of TNT poisoning and explosions. Women also served with the military forces. There were 40,850 in Queen Mary’s Auxiliary Army Corps by the end of the war. Some 17,000 women were employed with the British Expeditionary Force in August 1918. Many of these were nurses. In all, the total number of women employed during the war rose form 5.96 million in 1914 to 7.31 million by 1918. Some changes were particularly striking. The number employed in metalworking rose from 170,000 to 594,000, in transport from 18,200 to 117,200, in commerce from 505,200 to 934,000. In national and local government, the number of female employees rose from 262,000 to 460,000. At the same time as the number of women in munitions and factories went up, the numbers working in ‘traditional’ areas of female employment such as domestic service and the clothing trade declined[4].

Although there was an overall rise in the number of women employed during the war, female employment was an established feature of many pre-war industries. What gave the impression of change was the temporary change in the background of the women employed. In particular, many middle class women took on jobs that had previously been done by working class women. It has been suggested that both the increase in and changing character of, female employment during the war has been exaggerated because of some historians’ readiness to rely too much on the evidence of contemporary propaganda. This was produced both by the government (that hoped to give the impression that it was solving a national crisis) and by feminists (who hoped to use the image of wartime involvement as a lever for further expansion of employment opportunities after the war)[5]. Despite the formation of the Women’s Land Army, there were only 23,000 more women working on the land in 1918 than there had been in 1914. It could be argued that the overall increase in the number of women employed during the war – around 1.5 million – was not particularly large. In addition, many women lost their jobs when the war was over. In fact, the overall percentage of women in work fell from 35 per cent in 1911 to 34 per cent in 1921. The net impact of the war was a temporary increase in female unskilled munitions workers and a permanent shift in the bulk of women’s employment from domestic service to white-collar and service-sector employment.

During the build-up to the 1918 Representation of the People Act, government propaganda suggested that the sacrifices made by women during the war had earned them the right to vote. When women were enfranchised, billboards announced “The Nation Thanks the Women”. In reality, most historians agree that there is little evidence that war service caused a change in attitude towards women’s political rights. The restrictions on women’s voting in 1918 suggest that there was little alteration in the treatment of women as second-class citizens. Men continued to oppose the idea that women should come out of the private sphere and into the workforce, because they believed that the employment of women would push their wages down. Attitudes towards women in work did not shift in any fundamental way.

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[1] Stanislaw Andreski Military Organisation and Society, Routledge, 1954.

[2] Arthur Marwick The Deluge: British Society and the First World War, 2^nd ed., Macmillan, 1991, page 333.

[3] Martin Pugh The Making of Modern British Politics 1867-1939, Blackwell, 1982, page 188.

[4] Arthur Marwick Women at war, Fontana, 1977 is both well written and well illustrated. Gail Braybon Women workers in the First World War, Routledge, 2^nd ed., 1989 looks in greater detail at industrial workers. Carol Twinch Women on the land: their story during two world wars, Lutterworth, 1990 considers the agrarian dimension. Diana Condell and Jean Liddiard Working for victory? Images of women in the First World War 1914-1918, Routledge, 1987 provide a visual dimension.

[5] On this issue, see Diana Condell and Jean Liddiard Working for victory? Images of women in the First World War 1914-1918, Routledge, 1987; it provides an interesting visual dimension.

Women get the vote: The political impact of war

Some historians have described Britain’s experience in the First World War as its first taste of ‘total war’ (war in which entire societies are mobilised against each other, with the home front becoming just as important as the fighting front). Around six million British people had direct experience of trench warfare while most of the remaining population became involved in the war effort in some way. This meant change and upheaval in some way. There is, however, a debate about the nature and extent of the change produced by the war. This centres on whether the war is seen as the cause of fundamental change or whether, alternatively, it can be seen as a catalyst that accelerated existing political, social and economic trends[1].

There is one particular problem historians face when trying to assess the significance of wartime experience for the women’s cause. This relates to one’s view of the stage reached by 1914 and is further complicated by the need to distinguish the direct from the indirect effects of the war. By 1913, there was a clear suffragist majority in parliament and this, combined with the emergence of a politically realistic proposal to enfranchise women in 1913, meant that the immediate effect of the war was negative. It ended the suffrage campaign and pushed the issue off the political agenda.

What was the political impact of the war?

The outbreak of war in August 1914 led to a wave of patriotism and anti-German feeling and all-party support for the Liberal government’s declaration of war. Until May 1915, Asquith attempted to conduct the war through existing structures of party government. Then, on 14^th May 1915, the so-called ‘Shell Scandal’ broke when an article was published in The Times claiming that British soldiers were unable to make headway because they were being left short of shells to fire at the enemy. This precipitated a political crisis that led to the creation of a coalition government under Asquith[2].

Conservatives took up senior positions in the government with Bonar Law as Colonial Secretary and Arthur Balfour as First Lord of the Admiralty (replacing Winston Churchill, whose handling of the Gallipoli campaign made him expendable). Lloyd George took over as head of the new Ministry of Munitions and his position was strengthened in July 1916 when he took over as Minister for War (following Lord Kitchener’s death on a mission on Russia).  Lloyd George was popular in the Liberal Party at large, but he had too many personal enemies in the Cabinet. This made it unlikely that he would every succeed Asquith as Liberal leader. The creation of the coalition government changed this and increasingly Lloyd George promoted himself as an alternative War leader. He focused on two issues – the need for conscription (compulsory military service) and the creation of a smaller War Cabinet that, he claimed, would be more efficient and effective. Both brought him into conflict with Asquith.

Conscription was a sensitive issue in the Liberal Party and Asquith tried to reconcile his party’s historical commitment to individual freedom with the demands of total war. His response to Lloyd George’s demand for full conscription was the ‘Derby Scheme’ of October 1915. This compromise allowed the adult male population to be classified by age, marital status and occupation as the first step on the road to conscription. This ended in failure. By December 1915, recruitment had fallen to 55,000 per month (compared in the 450,000 men who had joined in September 1914). Despite Asquith’s continued reluctance, conscription was introduced in January 1916 though John Simon, the Home Secretary resigned over the issue.  Lloyd George’s call for a small War Cabinet intensified when he succeeded Lord Kitchener at the War Office. This issue triggered the end of the Asquith coalition and Lloyd George’s promotion to the position of Prime Minister. On 1^st December 1916, Lloyd George suggested the formation of a small War Cabinet with himself in the chair and Bonar Law and Edward Carson as members. Asquith would remain prime minister but would not be a member. Asquith was, at first, hostile but agreed to the plan on 3^rd December once Conservative resignations had been threatened. Asquith then changed his mind and rejected the plan the following day following the publication of an article in The Times that discussed the plan in terms that put Asquith in a very bad light. This led to the resignation of first, Lloyd George, second, Conservative ministers and finally, on 5^th December, Asquith. The following day, a conference of party leaders at Buckingham Palace took place. The king offered the position of prime minister to Bonar Law who said that he would only accept if Asquith agreed to serve under him. Asquith refused to do this. It then emerged that Conservative ministers were prepared to serve under Lloyd George. On 7^th December 1916, the king reluctantly invited him to become prime minister. The other Liberal ministers resigned with Asquith. Lloyd George secured the support of the Conservative, Labour and about 100 Liberal MPs. The other Liberal MPs remained loyal to Asquith. The split within the Liberal Party was clearly drawn.

The war did not harm the long-term prospects of the Labour Party though initially it served to emphasise divisions within the party.  When the war broke out, Ramsay MacDonald resigned as chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. He was joined in opposition to the war by Philip Snowden and a small group of largely Independent Labour Party MPs. The majority of party members, however, supported the war and MacDonald and his supporters became a target of abuse from many trade unions and the popular press. MacDonald was replaced as chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party by Arthur Henderson. Henderson did not attempt to expel those Labour members who were against the war. This avoided the harmful split that severely damaged the Liberal Party.

The Labour Party managed to avoid the lasting splits that occurred in parallel socialist groups in France and Germany. First, those who opposed the war, for the most part did not campaign against it. Instead, they campaigned for measures to prevent future wars and almost all parties could agree with the ideas they suggested. Secondly, all members of the Labour Party were united in demanding that the economic welfare of the working class should be protected even during a national emergency. Both those opposed to the war and those supporting it worked together amicably on bodies like the Emergency Workers’ National Committee, created to press for adequate government protection for soldiers’ families, the restraint of food prices and rent control. Third, even those who supported the war effort were sometimes critical of the ways in which the government conducted it.  Though the Parliamentary Labour Party was represented in government in May 1915 and in the Cabinet after Lloyd George came to power in December 1916, it was never wholly at ease with the coalition. In August 1917, Arthur Henderson resigned from the Cabinet when Labour leaders were refused permission to attend an international socialist conference to discuss peace conditions. This gave Henderson and other leaders in the party the opportunity to encourage party unity to take advantage of Labour’s rising electoral prospects. There was a big growth in party membership during the war and the Representation of the People’s Act of February 1918 trebled the electorate.

The coalition formed by Lloyd George in December 1916 has been described by some historians as a turning point in modern British politics because it led to a four-year post-war experiment in non-party government. Others are more cynical in their views holding that the motive behind continued co-operation between Lloyd George Liberals and the Conservatives was to neutralise the growing threat from Labour. What really happened in the ‘Coupon Election’ of December 1918 was a decisive victory for the Conservatives, the full extent of which was disguised by Lloyd George continuing as prime minister.  From December 1916, Lloyd George organised the war effort through a small War Cabinet. Most historians accept that this arrangement increased the efficiency and effectiveness of decision-making. However, in May 1918, Lloyd George was criticised in the press by the recently retired Director of Military Operations, General Sir Frederick D. Maurice, for misleading the House of Commons about the number of troops in France. The result was a select committee into Lloyd George’s conduct. Ninety-eight Liberals voted against the prime minister and with Asquith. Two separate Liberal organisations now emerged, first at Westminster with their own whips and then in the constituencies. The Maurice debate showed just how dependent Lloyd George was on his Conservative supporters.

It was in the immediate aftermath of the Maurice debate and the growing threat of Communist revolution in Europe that Lloyd George discussed the possibility of co-operating after the war in a ‘Progressive Centre Alliance’. By October 1918, these discussions had formed the basis of the ‘coupon’ arrangement for the forthcoming general election. Lloyd George and Bonar Law approved Liberal and Conservative candidates. Candidates who gained their approval became ‘coalition’ candidates and received a ‘coupon’ signed by both leaders confirming this. Those ‘couponed’ would not be opposed by a Conservative or Lloyd George Liberal. While 150 Liberals were couponed, the number of Conservatives was 300.

The result of the Coupon Election was a triumph for the coalition. It took 473 seats, with Labour 57, Asquith Liberals 36, Irish Nationalists 7, Sinn Fein 73 and others 61[3]. There was some support for making the alliance between Lloyd George Liberals and Conservatives in 1920 but the attempt failed. The coalition finally collapsed in October 1922 when the Conservatives withdrew their support for Lloyd George. The Coupon Election proved not to be a mandate for any fundamental realignment of party politics, but for peace, reconstruction and reform[4].

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[1] There are several valuable books on the ways in which the war affected Britain. John Bourne Britain and the Great War 1914-18, Edward Arnold, 1989 and Stephen Constantine, Maurice W. Kirby and Mary B. Rose (eds.) The First World War in British History, Edward Arnold, 1995 provide an excellent introduction. Arthur Marwick The Deluge: British Society and the First World War, 2^nd ed., Macmillan, 1991 was the first study to really examine the impact of ‘total war’.

[2] John Turner British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict, 1915-1918, Yale University Press, 1992 is a classic study.

[3] None of the 73 Sinn Fein elected took up their seats in Westminster. The high number of ‘others’ included 50 Conservatives who were elected even though they did not have the ‘coupon’.

[4] K. O. Morgan Consensus and Disunity: the Lloyd George Coalition 1918-22, Oxford University Press, 1979 is the most detailed study available.

How did different social groups respond to women's suffrage?

British society was as divided over women’s suffrage as the major political parties.  Broadly, society fell into three categories. There were those who supported the call for women’s suffrage. There were those who opposed it. Finally, there was what has been called, ‘the silent majority’, those for whom women’s suffrage was not an issue often because it was not relevant to their needs.  However, women’s suffrage was a fluid issue on which people’s attitudes changed over time. The supporters and opponents of the campaign changed between 1865 and 1918. It is important to recognise this.

 

Social classes	Attitudes to women’s suffrage cut across social classes. They did not depend on class or, more precisely, were not necessarily determined by class. In very broad terms, within the three social classes, attitudes to women’s suffrage fell into one of three categories. There were those who were in favour of women’s suffrage and may have been active in the women’s movement. There were those who were opposed to women’s suffrage in relation to parliamentary elections (though not necessarily elections to local government) and who may have been active in the anti-suffragist activities. There was the ‘silent majority’. This included those for whom women’s suffrage was a largely irrelevant issue or who were undecided one way or the other. This position was especially important for the working classes, especially working class women whose lives were more concerned with economic than political issues. In many respects, the Fabian women with their focus on the economics of marriage were more relevant to their interests and needs than the suffrage movement. Brian Harrison provides evidence suggesting that there was a great deal of anti-suffragist feeling among the working class. The failure of George Lansbury to defeat an anti-suffragist Conservative candidate at the by-election in late 1912 in a largely working class constituency provides some support for this position. However, Jane Liddington and Ann Norris have shown that, in some parts of the country especially in the north-west, there is substantial evidence of pro-suffragist working class feeling.
Gender	The same point can be made about gender. There were female members of the Anti-Suffrage League and, conversely, male organisations were set up to campaign for women’s suffrage. Some supporters of women’s suffrage were totally opposed to the idea that initially only certain categories of women should be given the vote. They formed the Adult Suffrage Society and its chairperson was Margaret Bondfield. Members of the organisation believed that a limited franchise would disadvantage the working class and feared that it might act as a barrier against the granting of adult suffrage. Some women, especially members of the middle class, saw limited suffrage as an important step in the struggle to win the vote. The main supporters of the organisation were women trade unionists and members of the Independent Labour Party. Members of the Adult Suffrage Society included Margaret Macmillan, Mary Macarthur, Ottoline Morrell, Emily Hobhouse, Lucy Hammond, Leonard Hobhouse, Arthur Ponsonby and Fred Jowett. Although the majority of men opposed the idea of women voting in parliamentary elections, some leading male politicians supported universal suffrage. This included several leaders of the Labour Party, including James Keir Hardie, George Lansbury and Philip Snowdon. Frederick Pethick-Lawrence helped to fund Votes for Women and provided bail for nearly a thousand members of the WSPU who were arrested for breaking the law. Robert Cecil, one of the main figures in the Conservative Party was also a supporter but most Conservative MPs were opposed to the idea of votes for women. Several members of the Liberal administration, such as David Lloyd George, also favoured women being given the vote. The first male-only organisation, the Men’s Suffrage League for Women’s Suffrage was established in 1907 by two left-wing journalists, Henry Nevinson and Henry Brailsford and numbered among its members men from all shades of political opinion. Three years later, the Men’s Federation for Women’s Enfranchisement was established, adopting WSPU tactics. At a by-election in Wimbledon in 1907 Bertrand Russell, stood as the Suffragist candidate. As with class, reactions to the suffrage campaigns were not necessarily determined by gender.
Trade unions	Trade unions were, in general, hostile to women’s suffrage. This occurred because of ‘pride and fear’. This was the pride of men for whom the franchise was one element of their improved status that they could not easily share. There fear was the fear of the skilled worker. Women as unskilled labour, they believed, held down wages and inhibited union agreements in an overstocked labour market. Nevertheless, in 1913, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) followed the Labour Party and made its support for any government-supported Adult Suffrage Bill dependent on the inclusion of women. There were women trade unionists[1].  Women’s trade unions tended to have their most marked successes in recruiting in periods when male union activity was riding high. In 1832, 1500 women card-setters at Peep Green Yorkshire came out on strike for equal pay. The Lancashire cotton mill women were active in trade unions. In 1859, the North East Lancashire Amalgamated Society was formed for both men and women and in 1884 the Northern Counties Amalgamated Association of Weavers was established for male and female workers. However, the most significant development was the emergence of separate women’s unions. Thus, the Women’s Protective and Provident League (WPPL) was established in 1874 at a time when men’s unions were enjoying some success, both in membership terms and in establishing their legality. Similarly, it was in the brief period of ‘new unionism’ in the late 1880s and early 1890s when unskilled labour became politicised that the Women’s Industrial Council (WIC) and a score of women’s unions were established. The late nineteenth century saw considerable industrial action by women: the famous Bryant and May’s match-girls’ strike of 1888 but also the Dewsbury textile workers in 1875, the Aberdeen jute workers in 1884, Dundee jute workers in 1885 and Bristol confectionery workers. Women’s unions, under the inspiration of the League, campaigned for better wages and working conditions. It is a reflection of this era of separate female unions that in 1906 there were 167,000 members of all unions and that by 1914 this had risen to nearly 358,000. The 1890s saw both a growth of women’s trade union membership and the creation of several new women’s organisations. The Women’s Trade Union Association (WTUA) was founded in 1889 by women dissatisfied with the stance of the WTUL, amongst them Clementina Black, Amie Hicks, Clara James and Florence Balgarnie. Its aims differed little from the parent body and it was to be a short-lived venture merging in 1897 with the Women’s Industrial Council then three years old.  In 1870, some 58,000 women were members of trade unions but by 1896 that has risen to 118,000, a figure representing some 7.8 per cent of all union members. Unionism was strong in the textile and especially cotton industry where women often outnumbered male operatives. Women had since the 1850s been incorporated in mixed unions. In 1886, Clementina Black and Eleanor Marx, both became active in the Women’s Trade Union League. For the next, few years they travelled the country making speeches trying to persuade women to join trade unions and to campaign for “equal pay for equal work”. In 1889, Clementina Black helped form the Women’s Trade Union Association. Five years later, she merged this organisation with the Women’s Industrial Council. Clementina became president of the council and for the next twenty years, she was involved in collecting and publicizing information on women’s work. Most members of Women’s Industrial Council were also active in the suffrage movement. Organizations such as the NUWSS and the Women’s Freedom League worked closely with the council and other groups campaigning for better pay and conditions for women workers. By 1910, women made up almost one third of the workforce. Work was often on a part-time or temporary basis. It was argued that if women had the vote Parliament would be forced to pass legislation that would protect women workers. The Women’s Industrial Council concentrated on acquiring information about the problem and by 1914, the organisation had investigated one hundred and seventeen trades. In 1915, Clementina Black and her fellow investigators published their book Married Women’s Work. This information was then used to persuade Parliament to take action against the exploitation of women in the workplace.
Newspapers	Most national and regional newspapers, especially The Times were hostile to the women’s suffrage campaign especially after militant action began. On the other hand, militancy did encourage newspapers to print stories about the suffragettes, providing them with the ‘oxygen’ of publicity.  The suffrage movement produced its own newspapers: Common Cause (NUWSS), Vote (Women’s Franchise League) and Votes for Women (WSPU).
Religious groups	The WSPU condemned the Church of England because it did not speak out in favour of women’s suffrage and because its bishops in the House of Lords did not oppose the Cat and Mouse Act[2]. However, some individual clergymen did speak out in favour of the vote and a large number spoke out against forcible feeding. As might be expected, the traditional links between nonconformity and radicalism, there was greater support for women suffrage campaigns from the nonconformist churches. Within the Anglican Church, support for the parliamentary suffrage was part of a broader campaign by Anglican women for a greater role in the governing of the Church.  There were many ardent Anglicans in suffragist ranks including Maude Royden and Louise Creighton (who helped align the National Council of Women behind women’s suffrage). Many of these women belonged to the Church League for Women’s Suffrage[3], founded in 1909 by the Revd Claude Hinscliff. Its primary aim was to secure the parliamentary vote for women on the same terms as men and to do so by non-militant means[4]. It also sought to draw out what its founder called “the deep religious significance of the women’s movement” and there were, on occasions, special services for suffragists; for example, Percy Dearmer’s at St Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill in 1912. In August 1912, the CLWS had more than 3,000 members and by April 1914, this had increased to over 5,000 churchmen and women.  Archbishop Randall Davidson, who was privately a passive suffragist, had considerable difficulty in maintaining his non-committal public stance as the militant campaign intensified. Between 1908 and 1914, militants put considerable pressure on him, particularly between January and September 1914, in connection with the effects of forcible feeding. One group that took a particularly harsh line with Davidson was the Suffragist Churchwomen’s Protest Committee, whose secretary Mrs Alice Kidd, condemned the “servile attitude of the Heads of the Church towards an unjust and irresponsible government”.

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[1] Barbara Drake Women in Trade Unions, London, 1921 reprinted by Virago, 1984 is the classic starting-point on this subject. See also: Norbert C. Soldon Women in British Trade Unions 1874-1976, Gill & Macmillan, 1978, Eleanor Gordon Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland 1850-1914, Oxford University Press, 1991 which focuses on the jute industry in Dundee and Judy Lown With Free and Graceful Step? Women and industrialisation in nineteenth century England, Polity, 1987. Anne Taylor Annie Besant: A biography, Oxford University Press, 1992 is now the standard work on a critical figure in the development of women’s trade union rights, birth control and women’s rights generally.

[2] Brian Heeney The Women’s Movement in the Church of England 1850-1930, Oxford University Press, 1988, especially pages 105-108 examines the part played by Anglican women in the suffrage movement.

[3] The League existed from 1909 until 1919, when it became the League of the Church Militant (LCM). The end for the LCM came in 1928 with a public announcement, “the general idea is that one major aim of the LCM – equal franchise – is achieved and that advance is made towards the other, the ordination of women”.

[4] Interestingly, given its non-partisan commitment and its belief in non-militancy, on 25^th September 1913 the Standard remarked that “[since] no fewer than six members of the elected committee, including the chairman, are subscribers to the Women’s Social and Political Union, a grave doubt must arise as to the real character of this outwardly respectable society”.

How political parties reacted to women's suffrage: the Liberal Party

The Liberals were in government after 1906 and it was because of their unwillingness to respond positively to demands for women’s suffrage that the WSPU’s militant campaign escalated[1]. The government’s reaction to women’s suffrage campaigns was negative despite there being several sympathisers in the cabinet. Throughout the period 1903 to 1914, the suffragists never managed to convince the government that it should set aside sufficient parliamentary time to ensure the passage of a women’s suffrage bill.

 

General position	Most of the Liberal Party did support some form of women’s suffrage. They recognised it to be part of their historical commitment to democracy and the extension of liberty. They understood that the vote traditionally had embodied the symbol of full citizenship. Since women had the duties and responsibilities of citizens, they should also have a citizen’s rights. Fairness also dictated that women should have the vote, since the laws passed by Parliament affected women as much as men. Most importantly, the well being of the nation demanded women’s involvement in political affairs. Liberal supporters of the franchise argued that women had a distinct point of view. The national life could only be enriched by the contribution of that viewpoint to public affairs, especially on matters relating to children and home life, social problems and the civilizing of the nation. Women, these Liberal concluded, had proved their responsibility and worth in raising families and managing the home. It was there a matter of justice that they should be given the vote.
What were the attitudes of the Liberal government?	The aims of the Liberal government on the question of women’s suffrage are far from clear. Some senior politicians hoped that, by ignoring the issue, it would go away. This may explain Asquith’s refusal to meet suffragist delegations. However, there is evidence suggesting that the campaign did make some impact on the government. The government was forced to make concessions, or at least the promise of concessions that raised women’s hopes – as in June 1908. That Asquith, an anti-suffragist was prepared to promise a women’s suffrage amendment, if certain conditions were met, shows that the suffrage campaign was making an impact. In addition, since the WSPU’s militant campaign involved breaking the law, the government was obliged to respond or allow the rule of law to break down. Some historians, notably Martha Vicinus and Susan Kingsley Kent have suggested that the use of force against suffragette demonstrators, for example on Black Friday was excessive and included sexual harassment and that the adoption of forcible feeding had symbolic as well as practical intentions. Virtually all Liberals were offended by the actions of the militants warning the WSPU that it was alienating public opinion and thus delaying achievement of its goal. Those who were less supportive of the women’s campaign treated the behaviour of the militants as evidence that women might not be fit for the vote. Following an attack on Asquith on 23rd November 1910, the Yorkshire Evening News launched a hysterical attack on the suffragettes. It called them “maniac women”, “lunatic females” and the “shrieking sisterhood” and ended by saying, “They should be put into a home and kept there until they have learned to forget the ways of the brute and have approximated to some degree of civilisation”. It can be argued that the government’s reaction was more than a simple attempt to maintain law and order. It was an attempt to ‘put women in their place’, an automatic reaction of a male dominated society that felt itself under threat. The appointment of Henry Asquith as prime minister in April 1908 represented a setback for the suffrage movement. His predecessor, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was not unsympathetic to the cause and said that the campaigners should keep ‘pestering’ the government. In 1906, the Cabinet contained a large majority of supporters of women’s suffrage; by 1912, changes had left it evenly divided.
Positive reaction	The Liberal Party, like the other parties, was divided on the issue of women’s suffrage. However, there is good evidence showing that the women’s suffrage campaigns made an important impact in the period 1903-1914. Support for women’s suffrage was strongest among Liberal women. By 1903, the Women’s Liberal Federation had passed a resolution in support of women’s suffrage. In the twenty by-elections between May 1904 and November 1905, the Federation demanded pro-suffrage pledges from Liberal candidates and refused to work for those who refused. It worked closely with the NUWSS in rallies, demonstrations and educational activities. After the 1906 election, the majority of the Executive Committee of the Federation viewed the WSPU tactics with distaste and clung to the hope that the Liberal government would honour its obligation to loyal women party workers. Within two years, disappointment at the lack of progress led to several members of the Executive Committee to resign their position and share platforms with the WSPU. What began as a trickle of resignations became more significant after 1912 with sixty-eight branches of the Federation collapsing between 1912 and 1914. The objective of the new Liberal Women’s Suffrage Union was to persuade the Liberal Party to adopt women’s suffrage as part of its programme and to promote this goal the Union would only support pro-suffrage candidates. With the women increasingly adopting the familiar tactics of Liberal pressure groups, it would be increasingly difficult to keep women’s suffrage as an open question. Lloyd George was warned that this policy could “lead, as surely to disruption and disaster as did the similar policy of the Unionist (Conservative) Party on Tariff Reform”. Many of the women left to join the Labour Party, seeing it as a better prospect for progress on women’s suffrage. The reaction of many Liberal suffragists to the failure of the suffrage campaign to achieve its goals under a Liberal government was to leave the Liberal Party. The suffrage campaign raised their hopes and then provoked disillusion in their party. Among the men, the National Liberal Federation overwhelmingly endorsed women’s suffrage in 1905, while the Scottish Liberal Association called on the government to introduce a suffrage bill in 1910. Among Nonconformists, there was considerable support for women’s suffrage. In 1909, the Wesleyan Methodist Conference reflected the new spirit that recognised female equality when it voted by 224 to 136 that women should be able to be elected as representatives to the Conference. The following year, nineteen District Synods endorsed the recommendation, while twelve opposed it.
Negative reaction	However, there was considerable opposition to women’s suffrage among Liberals. The main arguments put forward by Liberals (though not exclusively) were: These Liberals claimed either that the majority of women did not want the vote or that such an experiment, whose results were difficult to predict, should not take place unless the nation (that is the male electorate) were properly consulted and approved. A second line of argument was that each sex had its own proper sphere and politics was the sphere of men. Nor, the opponents argued, was a limited extension of the franchise possible. Once the principle of women’s suffrage was admitted, there was no logical stopping point short of universal suffrage with a female majority of the electorate. By emphasising the experimental nature of such a change, by questioning whether the community would benefit and whether the majority of women wanted it and by insisting that the nation must be consulted, these Liberal opponents of women’s suffrage were using arguments that might even lead to some Liberal supporters of suffrage to hesitate. Liberal supporters were made more hesitant by the uncertainty about the electoral effects of extending the suffrage. Conciliation Bills in 1910 and 1911 proposed giving the franchise to women on the same terms as men. Liberal constituency organisers were convinced that this would give the vote to unmarried or widowed property owners who would vote Conservative. Liberals therefore had a plausible political reason for opposing specific measures of enfranchisement without having to come out openly against the principle.

 

None of the three political parties completely supported women’s suffrage and divisions over the cause went across the political divide. The decision of the Labour Party in 1912 to include women’s suffrage as part of its political programme represented a long-term strategy. Arguments over the principle of women’s suffrage, combined with concerns about its impact on the political and electoral system, the activities of the militants and prevailing political concerns made it difficult for parties to support women’s suffrage unconditionally.

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[1] On the Liberal party in this period see, Paul Adelman The Decline of the Liberal Party 1910-31, Longman, 1981, Chris Cook A Short History of the Liberal Party 1900-97, Macmillan, 5^th ed., 1997 and G. R. Searle The Liberal Party: Triumph and Disintegration 1886-1929, Macmillan, 1992, 2^nd ed., 2001.

How political parties reacted to women's suffrage: the Conservative Party

Conservative governments dominated the twenty years between 1886 and 1906 with a brief Liberal interlude between 1892 and 1895[1]. Between 1886 and 1900, the Conservatives were politically dominant. However, its fragile dominance began to unravel after the 1900 general election. Although the party was victorious in 1900, with 334 Conservatives and 68 Liberal Unionists returned, the results hid its underlying vulnerability leading to the disastrous general election of January 1906. This was the product of various things. Lord Salisbury[2], prime minister from 1886 to 1892 and 1895 to 1902, lost his political grip and his subsequent retirement in July 1902 created divisions within the leadership especially when his nephew, Arthur Balfour succeeded him.

Increased rivalry between the great powers, and the perceived threat from Germany, led to more resources being channelled into imperial defence and this fuelled unease about Britain’s military competence. The second Boer War (1899-1902) where all the resources of the world’s largest imperial power took three years to defeat an army of South African farmers severely dented the self-confidence of the Conservatives as the party of empire, patriotism and national pride.  A perception of decline in Britain’s economic and commercial prompted some to question established free-trade economic ideas and led to important divisions within the Conservative Party after 1903.  A growing popular awareness of poverty by the 1890s and the emergence of the nascent Labour Party led to mounting demands for the state to introduce welfare policies to alleviate the problem.   In political terms, these developments had a significant impact of the party’s support and appeal. Rising levels of taxation and governmental spending to pay for the war undermined support as a succession of by-election defeats from 1901 demonstrated. The Conservative reputation as the political party of low taxation and little state intervention that had been so successful in winning over business and commercial interests and in creating middle and working class enclaves of support was badly damaged. The idea of Conservatism espoused by Lord Salisbury seemed increasing antiquated, indifferent and negative losing both political appeal and electoral purchase.

Arthur Balfour[3] sought a more centrist Conservative position. His mild, reformist approach tried to maintain established party support among landowners, commercial and financial groups and among the middle classes while pushing through essential policies to restore national finances after the South African War. It was a calm and sensible policy though not one necessarily designed to win the 1905-6 election. Its purpose was to avoid more extreme measures, maintain party unity and preserve as much support as possible while the party waited for the political pendulum to swing back in its favour. This strategy did not appeal to party supporters or backbench MPs, especially those in marginal constituencies and confirmed the increasing view of the leadership as hesitant. This left Balfour vulnerable to more radical forms of Conservatism championed by Joseph Chamberlain[4] that challenged Balfour’s mild approach between 1903 and 1905 and then, in the wake of electoral disaster, dominated it thereafter.

At the heart of Chamberlain’s ideas was tariff reform[5] that he launched in a dramatic speech in Birmingham on 15^th May 1903. Chamberlain saw tariff reform as a solution to the financial, social and political problems that confronted the country in the early 1900s. Protecting British markets, both manufacturing and agricultural, with trade barriers would mean a less severe business cycle and so secure better returns from land and maintain profit margins and stable levels of employment. The money raised from tariffs would be used to finance social policies like old age pension. Chamberlain believed that this package would undercut the appeal of the new Labour Party and wing growing numbers of working class votes behind the Conservatives. In addition, granting imperial territories exemption from tariffs would establish a free-trade area that would reduce the likelihood of imperial disintegration and strength of cultural and political bonds of empire through closer economic ties. Although Chamberlain won over a majority of the parliamentary party and the constituencies to his policy, especially between 1907 and 1910, it never took firm roots in the party in the same way as the anti-Home rule policy of Salisbury in the 1880s.  The problem with tariff reform was not that it was a poorly thought out policy but that it did not carry the whole party. From 1903 onwards, the Conservative party was in a state of civil war[6]. Few observers were surprised when the party lost the 1906 general election though they were surprised by the scale of the disaster. The Liberals took 401 seats compared to 184 in 1900 reducing the Conservatives to a mere 156 seats (compared to 402 in 1900). The defeat was one of the largest in its history and led to the Conservatives’ longest continuous period in opposition. Not until 1915, did the Tories again hold office (in the coalition government) and not with a Commons’ majority until October 1922.

The mixed political fortunes of the party after 1906 turned sharply against the Conservatives from 1909, as many of the props that sustained the existing social order, including the empire, the landed interest and the constitution came under attack from the Liberal government.  The Liberal party shifted in a more radical direction because of Henry Asquith replacing Campbell-Bannerman as prime minister in April 1908. Lloyd George was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. Together with Winston Churchill at the Board of Trade and then the Home Office, they began a process of radical social welfare reform. Lloyd George was eager to move to a new tax system based on graduation (tax bands) and differentiation (taxing unearned income such as land rather than earned income, such as capital). This hit the landed classes and the very rich, which held the largest amount of unearned income and were likely to vote Conservative.

The Conservative resistance to these financial innovations centred on Lloyd George’s budget of 1909, the so-called ‘People’s Budget’. This increased death duties, imposed higher rates of taxation on unearned income, increased inheritance duties, introduced super-tax on incomes over £5,000 and modest taxes on land. In retrospect, they were exceptionally mild. However, for the Conservatives, the budget represented a series of grave threats to their political position. The House of Lords, in which there was a built in Conservative majority, rejected the budget in November 1909. This precipitated a constitutional crisis, as traditionally the Lords did not use its veto against ‘money’ bills.  This proved a high-risk strategy for the Conservatives and they lost. The constitutional crisis led to two general elections in 1910 and although the Conservatives recovered well, it was not enough to undermine the Liberal-Labour alliance. This threw the Conservative party into chaos. The result was the 1911 Parliament that removed the absolute veto from the Lords and replaced it with a three-year conditional one. This led to the increasing dominance of the House of Commons by the executive (the government). With no constitutional brake on the government, bills scheduled for 1912, including that for Welsh church disestablishment, a bill to end plural voting (whereby property-owners had more than one vote) and Irish Home rule would all become law by 1914, whether the Lords rejected them or not.

Balfour was replaced as Conservative leader in the Commons by Andrew Bonar Law[7] in 1912. The situation for the party was desperate. It was out of control and directionless, divided over tactics and policy and badly demoralised about its future prospects. What was needed was an alternative to tariff reform around which the party could unify. Bonar Law constructed a new approach based on the defence and restoration of the constitution. Playing the constitutional card provided a variety of ways with which to attack the government. This applied particularly to the question of Irish Home Rule. The Home Rule Bill was introduced in 1912 and, following rejection by the Lords, in 1913 and 1914. The Ulster Unionists, backed by the Conservative Party would not accept Home Rule at any price. They established illegal paramilitary organisations to resist. The outbreak of war in August 1914 provided a ready escape from the full consequences of the campaign against Home Rule.  The party was in opposition from 1906, divided over tariff reform and then faced with the constitutional onslaught of the Liberal government. In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that women’s suffrage was not a major political priority.

The Conservative Party was the ‘natural home’ of the Antis but that does not mean that the party’s reaction to women’s suffrage was completely negative. There is good evidence to suggest that a number of individuals prominent in the campaign for women’s suffrage were Conservative (the most prominent was Lady Constance Lytton), but also that Conservative party organisations, notably certain sections of the Primrose League actively supported the campaign.

 

General position	The prospect and subsequent arrival of women’s suffrage prompted many Tories to lament the uncertainty of future politics. There was remarkable agreement in the party about the existence of a specifically female political agenda. Conservatives of both sexes generally assumed that women favoured ‘domestic’ political issues with a particular emphasis on matters affecting women and children and on social reform. Whatever the attitude of Conservatives to female involvement in the party, their enthusiasm was tempered by a sense of its irrelevance while women lacked the vote. Henry Bottomley reminded canvassers in 1912: “Don’t be satisfied with seeing the wife. She may talk, but remember the husband is the voter. See him.” Conservative attitudes to women’s suffrage were mixed between 1880 and 1914 and support came only when it was widely believed that women voters would support the party. Every Conservative leader from Disraeli onwards expressed some sympathy for women’s suffrage but the value of their support was diminished by their reluctance to take up the question while actually in office[8].
Negative reaction	It is important to understand that the Conservatives who opposed women’s suffrage often did so because they feared it would lead to universal suffrage. Lady Salisbury was convinced that even limited women’s suffrage would inevitably lead to the universal suffrage and that this would disadvantage the Conservative Party. Such people believed the vote to be a privilege based on personal fitness and not a right. The success that the Conservative had between 1874 and 1906 (they were in government with the exception of 1880-85, 1886 and 1892-5) was argument enough against further change of the electoral system. Many Conservatives saw no reason to tamper with a winning system. There were always more Liberals than Conservatives in favour of giving women the vote. While backbench Conservative hostility has probably been exaggerated, there is no doubt that many Conservatives figured in the lists of the anti-suffrage movement. Both Lord Cromer and Lord Curzon were leading opponents.
Positive reaction	Upper class women and Conservative Party supporters were also supporters of the women’s suffrage movement or active in the movement. Lady Dorothy Nevill, Lady Frances Balfour, Lady Betty Balfour, Lady Selborne, Lay Londonderry and many others were active in the campaigns for women’s suffrage. These women were part of the political establishment and important members of the Primrose League. As in so many areas, Conservative women tended, at first at least, to work in the background. Rather than forming their own suffrage organisations or getting involved with existing organisations, they generally preferred to talk to their husbands, brothers and relatives and try to convince them of the need to give women the vote. Some of them, like Lady Constance Lytton, a militant and Lady Betty Balfour, a suffragist, even managed to get themselves arrested. It was not until 1908 that Lady Selborne formed the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Suffrage Association. The organisation started The Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Review to promote their ideas. They argued that giving certain ‘qualified’ women (based on existing property qualifications) the vote would help avoid the catastrophe of universal male suffrage. Soon after its foundation, the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Suffrage Association joined the NUWSS and here an obvious conflict developed. The NUWSS was, in principle, a non-party organisation. The problem was that the Labour Party, unlike the other two, was officially committed to giving women the vote. As a result, the NUWSS supported more Labour candidates than those from the other two parties, a relationship that grew closed in 1912-13. Many people warned Balfour and Bonar Law about the dangers of allowing the Labour Party to take over the women’s suffrage question, as they feared that women would become embittered against the Tories. Since most of them believed that women would one day get the right to vote, there seemed to be no reason to create a large group of electors hostile to the party. His then was the dilemma facing all Conservative suffragists. Were they to be Conservative first and then suffragists or vice versa? Suffragism forced them towards the Labour Party, hardly a prospect that appealed to many Conservative women. On the other hand, they were getting little positive response from their own party. Battle did occur on this issue but most Conservative suffragists subordinated their suffragism to their Conservatism. In this, they were helped by the party being out of power during the worst part of the suffragette agitation. The Liberals bore the full brunt of their fury. The Conservative and Unionist Women’s Suffrage Association was devoted to constitutional methods and did not believe in the same methods as the WSPU. This did not mean that they were unsympathetic to the militants though few went as far as Lady Constance Lytton. The general hostility of the Conservative suffragists to the WSPU did not prevent them from being in touch with the Pankhursts and, on occasions, co-ordinating policy with them. This process was aided by the growing conservatism of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. Both increasingly distrusted the Labour Party and the trade unions, both of which were to some extent hostile to women’s suffrage. The Labour Party appeared more interested in adult suffrage and only coincidentally with female suffrage. The largely male trade unions were not favourably disposed to women’s rights seeing female employment as unfair competition. However, neither Balfour nor Bonar Law were prepared to take the risk of committing their party to either the WSPU or its methods largely because opinion in the party was deeply divided on the issue. The crux of the problem was that women’s suffrage would divide the Conservative Party. That is why no party leader dared to take up the question until after the First World War, when hostility to women’s suffrage and, more importantly universal manhood suffrage, had declined. An examination of the voting records on all the women’s suffrage bills presented to Parliament shows that Conservatives passed through three distinct phases. From 1867 to 1883, Conservatives consistently voted against suffrage bills by a margin of three or four to one. However, the following period, from 1884 to 1908, showed a reversal of this trend and, with one exception, the suffragists were in the majority. This growing support for women’s suffrage owed a great deal to the efforts of the Primrose League and the National Union approved suffrage resolutions in 1887, 1889, 1891, 1894, 1907, 1908 and 1910. After 1909, the results became less clear. A majority voted against suffrage bills on five out of seven occasions. This occurred because women’s suffrage was mixed up with adult suffrage and many Conservatives were only in favour of limited female suffrage. Their votes on these bills tell us more about their attitude to democracy than to women. The pre-war period was a time of fierce hostility between the Conservative and Liberal Parties. Women’s suffrage played only a small part in that drama. Far more important were the issues of the powers of the House of Lords and home rule for Ireland. The support, tepid though it was, of the Conservative leadership for women’s suffrage had less to do with principle than party advantage. Like the Liberal Party, the Conservatives were divided over the question. However, there was no inherent conflict between conservatism and women’s suffrage.

 

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[1] On the development of the Conservative Party in this period see, John Ramsden An Appetite for Power: A History of the Conservative Party since 1830, Harper Collins, 1998, Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball (eds.) Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900, Oxford University Press, 1994, John Charmley A History of Conservative Politics 1900-1996, Macmillan, 1996 and Jeremy Smith The Taming of Democracy: The Conservative Party 1880-1924, University of Wales Press, 1997. Martin Francis and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (eds.) The Conservatives and British Society 1880-1990, University of Wales Press, 1996 is a valuable collection of essays including one on Conservatism and the politics of gender. The most detailed studies on the subject are: Richard Shannon The Age of Salisbury 1881-1902: Unionism and Empire, Longman, 1996 and John Ramsden The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902-1940, Longman, 1978.

[2] There are two recent biographies of Lord Salisbury: Andrew Roberts Salisbury: Victorian Titan, Weidenfeld, 1999 and David Steele Lord Salisbury: A Political Biography, UCL Press, 1999. Roberts is eminently readable and is a complete biography. Steele is more specific. Both have something (a little) to say about his attitude to women’s suffrage.

[3] Kenneth Young Arthur James Balfour, Bell, 1963 and Max Egremont Balfour, Collins, 1980 have been superceded by R. J. Q. Adams Balfour: The last Grandee, John Murray, 2007.  Ruddock Mackay Balfour: Intellectual Statesman, Oxford University Press, 1985 concentrates on Balfour’s role in education, foreign and defence policy, aspects neglected in previous studies and has some useful things to say about his attitudes to women’s suffrage.

[4] Peter Marsh Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics, Yale University Press, 1994 is the best biography.

[5] The most useful works on tariff reform are Alan Sykes Tariff Reform in British Politics 1903-13, Oxford University Press, 1979 and E. H. H. Green The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880-1914, Routledge, 1995. The context for tariff reform can best be approached through Anthony Howe Free Trade and Liberal England 1846-1946, Oxford University Press, 1997.

[6] Parallels have been drawn between the civil war over tariff reform between 1903 and 1906 and the debate within the Conservative Party after 1993 over the European Union. Both led to the impression of a divided party and both precipitated major electoral defeats, in 1906 and 1997.

[7] Robert Blake The unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law 1858-1923, London, 1955 is still useful though somewhat dated. R. J. Q. Adams Bonar Law, John Murray 1999 must be viewed as its replacement.

[8] G. E. Maguire Conservative Women: A History of Women and the Conservative Party, 1874-1997, Macmillan, 1998, pages 5-72 provides the clearest introduction to the subject.