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.