Suffrage after 1903: Suffragists 2 -- Women's Freedom League

The first major split within the WSPU led to the formation of the Women’s Freedom League in November 1907[1]. In September 1907, the Pankhursts decided to select a new executive committee for the WSPU. They were clearly concerned that they were losing control of the organisation and felt their position threatened by other capable women such as Charlotte Despard and Teresa Billington-Greig[2]. The rift was, however, over more than personality.  Democratic principles were involved and a basic disagreement over organisation. The Pankhursts believed that militant tactics required an autocratic structure. The women who left were increasingly sceptical of this approach and could not resolve the contradiction of an undemocratic organisation fighting for democratic reform.  The split also reflected the growing conservatism of Christabel and her mother. By 1907, they wanted to appeal mainly to wealthy women and the move to London the previous year was a further break from the ILP and working class heritage. To ILP members like Charlotte Despard and Teresa Billington-Greig, this new policy was a betrayal. The split was between right and left within the WSPU.

The WFL was probably the smallest of the three major bodies. In 1907, it has been estimated that 20 per cent of the WSPU left to join the League but Teresa Billington-Greig who puts the figure at half disputes this. By 1908, the League had 53 branches from Aberdeen to Clapham but by 1914, even the League itself only claimed 4,000 members and the circulation of its paper The Vote was small, reaching a peak of over 13,000 in November 1913. The Vote was used to inform the public of WFL campaigns such as the refusal to pay taxes and to fill in the 1911 Census forms.

Unlike the WSPU, the WFL did become a democratic organisation with annual conferences deciding policy and electing a national executive committee and president. However, Charlotte Despard dominated the organisation and in 1912 over a third of the candidates at a Special Conference voted to remove her from the presidency because of his growing autocratic manner. It was a militant society though it never adopted the tactics of the WSPU. Militancy was aimed solely at government and the later methods of the WSPU were condemned. On the other hand, the early tactics of the NUWSS were seen as too soft but this criticism abated as the National Union developed a more aggressive policy.

Like the WSPU, the Women’s Freedom League was a militant organisation that was willing the break the law. As a result, over 100 of their members were sent to prison after being arrested on demonstrations or refusing to pay taxes. However, members of the WFL were a completely non-violent organisation and opposed the WSPU campaign of vandalism against private and commercial property. The WFL were especially critical of the WSPU arson campaign. The aims of the League went beyond the vote. It was its broader demands that made the League different from both the WSPU and NUWSS[3]. As well as the vote, it called for equal opportunities. In its early days, there was an acceptance of a woman’s natural domestic and maternal role. All the stereotypes of women as housewives, child carers and domestic workers were tacitly accepted and even welcomed at this stage. Even though this was linked to demands for greater opportunities outside the home, it was increasingly criticised as the aims of the organisation broadened in 1909-10. Women became critical of what Cicely Hamilton[4] called ‘the Noah’s Ark principle’ [5]and she published a critical book on marriage, Marriage As A Trade, in 1909. The debate within the League became increasingly provocative and a Women’s Charter was put forward in late 1909.

In identifying both housework as ‘work’ and the economic power of men within the family, the League was making a further contribution to feminist thought and to the debate within suffragism that paralleled the work of the Fabians. Nevertheless, the League went further by linking women’s oppression to their lack of the franchise. Marion Holmes argued in 1910, “The difference between the voter and the non-voter is the difference between bondage and freedom”. Members of the WFL, like those in the NUWSS, believed that the vote would transform the lives of women. All this implies that emancipation would come through reform and legislation. Gradually the political analysis of the WFL widened and began to examine the relevance of economic power and class. This was partly due to the influence of leading members like Charlotte Despard but was also connected with the industrial militancy of 1910-14. The WFL supported the struggles of working class women and was quick to support their use of strikes. It constantly urged women workers to organise. The vote was not an end in itself but was linked to wider economic and social issues. The League’s attitude to working class women was a result of the links between the organisation and the Labour movement.

The WFL not only supported the struggles of working class women but also became actively involved. It worked, for example, with trade unionists and working women in Poplar in 1910, even before Sylvia Pankhurst organised her Federation in the East End. Yet, not all members approved of the growing association of the WFL with the Labour Party. The 1912 Conference not only accused Charlotte Despard of autocracy but of thrusting her political views on the League. Some felt that the League should have been struggling for all women, not just those of the working class. The growing class struggle from 1911 pushed the political analysis of the League further to the left and this reinforced the view that power did not solely rest with the possession of the parliamentary vote.

Most members of the Women’s Freedom League, was pacifists, and so when war was declared in 1914 they refused to become involved in the British Army’s recruitment campaign. The WFL also disagreed with the decision of the NUWSS and WSPU to call off the women’s suffrage campaign while the war was on. Leaders of the WFL such as Charlotte Despard believed that the British government did not do enough to end the war and between 1914 and 1918 supported the campaign of the Women’s Peace Council for a negotiated peace.

Three members of the Women’s Freedom League stood in the 1918 General Election. Charlotte Despard (Battersea), Elizabeth How-Martyn (Hendon) and Emily Phipps (Chelsea) all argued that women should have the vote on equal terms with men; that all trades and professions be opened to women on equal terms and for equal pay and that women should be allowed to serve on all juries. However, in the euphoria of Britain’s victory, the women’s anti-war views were very unpopular and like all the other pacifist candidates, who stood in the election, they were defeated

The importance of the League to an understanding of suffragism is immense. When viewed in the context of the development of the NUWSS nationally after 1910, it appears that the ‘non-militant’ wing of the campaign for the vote was increasingly associated with the Labour movement and the problems of working class women. The political analysis of the League argued that women’s emancipation went beyond the mere gaining of the vote. In this identification with working class women, there was an inherent danger that women’s oppression as a sex could be submerged and forgotten. The League did address this issue and concluded that emancipation required change in the relationship between men and women. This change, however, was not to be based on a new code of sexual relationships but on the prevailing moral code. In that, the WFL reflected the attitudes of the Labour movement.

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[1] Claire Eustance ‘Meanings of militancy: the ideas and practice of the Women’s Freedom League, 1907-14’, in Maroula Joannou and June Purvis (eds.) The Women’s Suffrage Movement: New feminist perspectives, Manchester, 1998, pages 51-64 and Hilary Francis ‘Dare to be free!: the Women’s Freedom League and its legacy’, in June Purvis and Sandra Stanley Holton (eds.) Votes for Women, Routledge, 2000 pages 181-202 are the most recent studies.

[2] Margaret Mulvihil Charlotte Despard: a biography, Pandora, 1989, and Andro Linklater, Charlotte Despard: An unhusbanded life, Hutchinson, 1980 are useful biographies. Carol McPhee and Ann Fitzgerald (eds.) Teresa Billington-Greig The non-violent militant: selected writings of Teresa Billington-Greig, Routledge, 1987 is a valuable collection of her writings

[3] This also accounts for the rejection of the title Women’s Enfranchisement League in favour of Women’s Freedom League in November 1907.

[4] On Cicely Hamilton, see Liz Whitelaw The Life & Rebellious Times of Cicely Hamilton, The Women’s Press, 1990

[5] This declared that ‘all human beings naturally and inevitably gravitate towards matrimony, pair off and beget children.’

Suffrage after 1903: Suffragists 1

Uncovering more evidence on the role played by various non-militants has resulted in the playing down of the significance of the Pankhursts. There is now far more evidence of support for suffragism among working class women, at least in areas like Lancashire where a high proportion of women worked outside the home. We also have biographies of both working class non-militants, such as Selina Cooper and middle class non-militants such as Isabella Ford[1] of the ILP. There are also grounds for thinking than in the last years before the war that middle class suffragists began to mobilise working class support for the first time.

A problem of language

There is, however, a problem of terminology. Existing terminology divides the British suffrage movement into two distinct wings, the ‘militants’ whose best know organisation was the WSPU, and the ‘constitutionalists’, most of whom were organised within the NUWSS. These organisations’ differences were generally taken to centre on the question of the use of violence in demonstrations. Yet few ‘militants’ were ‘militant’, and then only from 1912 onwards, if ‘militancy’ involved simply a preparedness to resort to extreme forms of violence. The analytical imprecision of the militant/constitutional division becomes even more evident. This usage is complicated further by many women belonging to both wings of the suffrage movement at the same time. Many suffragists did not view the two approaches as either mutually exclusive or at odds with each other. So what terms can historians use?

The term ‘radical’ carries similar problems when applied to suffragists. It was sometimes used to characterise the militant wing and to reinforce its distinctiveness from the old societies. More recently, it has been used to identify the movement among working class women in the textile towns of Lancashire. In both cases, the nature of radicalism is ill defined and where it is defined appears to hinge on links with the labour movement. There are, however, other very different candidates for the title of ‘radical suffragists’. The separatists among the militants, like the WFL, and the sexual libertarians around The Freewoman offered more fundamental challenges to the existing order of male-female relations, and Sylvia Pankhurst and other dissident socialist militants were involved in a far more radical challenge to the political order of the day.

One particular issue of recurrent discord and debate within all sections of the suffrage movement was the question of whether to relate the demand for equal votes for women to that for a fully independent Labour party in the House of Commons and the associated call for adult suffrage. Both militants and constitutionalists were to be found, at different times, working for an alliance between the two demands. Margaret Llewelyn Davies, a leader of the working class Women’s Co-operative Guild, coined the term ‘democratic suffragist’ to identify this body of opinion. Democratic suffragists covered a broad spectrum of political opinion from ‘progressive’ liberalism to revolutionary and ‘rebel’ socialism. Largely because of this they did not form an organised, united faction within the movement until after 1918. Even then, they worked through a number of organisations and their unity was short-lived.

The continued reliance on the division between militant and constitutionalist raises more questions that it resolves. Suffragism was far too diverse and fluid after 1906 to fit comfortably into one of these two categories. The difficulty that historians face is that the alternative categories do not provide for clarity of definition.

The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies

This can be seen clearly in the revival of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies after 1906. By 1914, it had over 50,000 members in 400 affiliated societies with an annual income of nearly £20,000. The ideas and political goals of the NUWSS broadened over time. It first tried to strengthen pro-suffrage sentiments in the Liberal Party, which it regarded as the women’s best hope and consequently focused more on the constituencies than on Parliament and to sponsor women suffrage candidates at by-elections. It aimed to recruit more members and publicise its efforts through attentions to visual imagery, mass demonstrations and marches, banquets and pageants, tours of the country, memorials, and meetings in drawing rooms and with Church groups, women’s organisations and political associations. It ran a professional operation by maintaining offices, an administrative staff, and team of organisers, a literature section and a newspaper The Common Cause. Recognising its strength in England, it paid close attention to forwarding the cause in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, accommodating the independent spirit of the Scottish and Irish workers. Its executive committee consisted of well-connected, able, reformist and frequently Liberal women headed by the then non-partisan Millicent Fawcett. In 1913, the NUWSS decided to hold a Women’s Pilgrimage to show Parliament how many women wanted the vote. Members of the NUWSS set off in the middle of June, and during the next six weeks held a series of meetings all over Britain. An estimated 50,000 women reached Hyde Park in London on 26^th July. The meetings held on the way were nearly all peaceful. However, a serious riot took place at a meeting organised by Marie Corbett of the East Grinstead Suffrage Society and Edward Steer of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage at East Grinstead three days before the end of the march.

The NUWSS was impressed by the initiatives of its North of England Society for Women’s Suffrage and guided by the democratic socialists. It was anxious to bring pressure on the government, find new allies and broaden its social base. The non-militants were also frustrated and disillusioned by Asquith’s obstruction and as a result, the Liberal and Conservative members of the NUWSS abandoned their long-standing non-party strategy. In 1912, they offered a pact with the Labour Party. Labour had a better voting record on suffrage bills than the other parties. In return for adopting a party policy involving opposition to any franchise bill that failed to include women, Labour was to receive backing from an Election Fighting Fund. The NUWSS would channel both workers and funds to support Labour candidates in by-elections and general elections where they stood against anti-suffragists from other parties. The result was that the NUWSS became involved in a succession of by-elections during 1912-14 in which the Liberals lost a number of seats[2]. The shift entailed cultivating Labour leaders, employing working class organisers, promoting the formation of suffrage clubs for working men and women in industrial areas, setting up suffrage committees in poor working class areas and reaching out to the trade unions. It involved extending associate membership to working class women who could not afford to join its societies: by 1914, there were 46,000 such Friends of Women Suffrage. The initiative was significance, not in its initial impact but for what it could lead to in the future. This can be seen in two respects.  It helped to accelerate deteriorating Liberal morale. Liberal women activists were dropping out if not actually joining another party. The Liberal government could easily withstand by-election defeats but Asquith could not risk the possibility of a breakdown of the electoral pact with Labour at the general election that was expected for 1914 or 1915. The more constituencies Labour contested the more likely it was that Conservatives would win because of splitting the radical vote.  Co-operation between the NUWSS and Labour seems to have fostered wider contact between middle class feminists and the working class movement.

This development, though promising, should not be over-exaggerated before 1914. The small number of Labour MPs was insufficient to give a decisive boost to suffrage legislation. In addition, Ramsay MacDonald fully intended to maintain electoral co-operation with the Liberals and did not intend being sidetracked by women suffragists. The effect of this co-operation on the NUWSS was not always positive. The operation of the Election Fighting Fund generated a good deal of friction with some members leaving and others feeling that there was a danger of the women’s cause being submerged in broader issues of Labour. Nor is it clear that Asquith was going to change his position though there is evidence from 1913 and 1914 that he appeared more conciliatory towards suffragism.

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[1] June Hannam Isabella Ford, Basil Blackwell, 1989 is one of the best biographies of a leading suffragist.

[2] Between 1912 and the outbreak of war in August 1914, the Liberals lost eight by-elections. The Labour Party did not win any of these but the electoral influence of the NUWSS increased the Labour party share of the vote and, in most cases, allowed the Conservatives to take the seats.