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.

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

Between 1903 and 1914, no political party in Parliament adopted women’s suffrage as part of its official programme[1]. Within all the major parties there was at least, some support for women’s suffrage though this was counterbalanced by support for the Antis and fears about the consequences of giving women the vote. The militant activities of the WSPU were viewed with outrage by those opposed to women’s suffrage. There is also evidence suggesting that some supporters of votes for women were irritated by WSPU militancy. The rapid increase in membership of the NUWSS in this period is significant. The fact that those who were sympathetic to women’s suffrage but disapproved of the activities of the WSPU had a non-militant alternative is important. It ensured that women’s suffrage had a ‘respectable’ side and prevented moderate support from being alienated. The WSPU may have brought the women’s movement considerable publicity and kept the issue in the public eye. However, the NUWSS ensured that the issue was not written off as something that could only appeal to extremists. How to respond to women’s suffrage campaigns was something that taxed all political parties between 1903 and 1914.

To understand why women’s suffrage was not viewed as a high priority in the decade before the outbreak of war in 1914, it is important to have some idea of the attitudes of the main political groupings. It is not easy to pinpoint these accurately as they were constantly in a state of flux. However, in general terms, the following opinions predominated:

• The Liberal party was in power during the whole period of WSPU militancy, from late 1905 to 1914. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (prime minister, 1905-8) probably sympathised with the suffragettes but merely advised them to ‘keep pestering’. His successor, Henry Asquith, was against women having the vote and was the brunt of much harassment. His opposition was grounded in the belief that if women were enfranchised on a property qualification, it would give the vote to many upper class women who would vote Conservative. A number of Asquith’s colleagues actually favoured female suffrage, among them Edward Grey (Foreign Secretary, 1905-16), Richard Haldane (Secretary of State for War, 1905-12) and Lloyd George (Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1908-16). They were, however, reluctant to go against Asquith when it came to voting on suffrage bills in the Commons.
• Most backbench Conservative MPs were against women having the vote; in contrast to some of the more prominent Tories, such as Arthur Balfour (prime minister 1900-1905) and Bonar Law (prime minister briefly in the early 1920s), who were sympathetic. There was a fear amongst the Tory opposition that adult suffrage would be granted giving the vote to working class men and women. They felt this would upset the balance of the electorate and work against them.
• During this period, the Labour Party was in its infancy and its main priority was to secure the vote for working class men[2]. Women’s suffrage was, therefore, a secondary issue. Many working class men who were not socialists took a dim view of women organising and this too influenced Labour party thinking. Prominent Labour party members who supported votes for women were George Lansbury, Philip Snowden and Keir Hardie. By 1912, womanhood suffrage had become official Labour party policy, so long as the vote was extended to all men at the same time.

From 1907, the WSPU became middle class in character and Mrs Pankhurst, in particular, moved towards the right gradually disassociating herself from the Labour party. It now appeared that her aim was limited suffrage for women; she had deserted working class women.

The Labour Party

The Labour Party emerged as a political force in British politics between 1903 and 1914[3]. The second and third Reforms Acts, respectively in 1867 and 1884, meant that more working class men were able to vote. With the exception of Keir Hardie and two other ‘Independent’ MPs elected in 1892, the only members of the working class to be elected to Parliament before 1900 were ‘Lib-Lab’ MPs (working class MPs sponsored and supported by the Liberal Party). Nevertheless, from the early 1880s, there was a growing momentum for setting up an independent working class (or ‘labour’) party to promote the interests of working class interests and provide working class representation.

The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was set up in 1893 but it remained weak because it lacked trade union support. Membership of the ILP grew rapidly between 1893 and 1895 when it had 35,000-50,000 members in over three hundred branches. Most of these branches were in Yorkshire (100), Lancashire and Cheshire (over 70) and in Scotland (40 and the Scottish Labour Party dissolved itself into the ILP in 1894) and London (30). Most of the remainder were in the Midlands and North East. There were few branches in Wales, the South East and South West or in Ireland. It was, therefore a provincial rather than a national party. The ILP had many women supporters who were allowed to be full members of the ILP, something that was not the case in the Conservative and Liberal Party branches at that time. Expectations were high in the 1895 election but all twenty-eight of its candidates were defeated, including Keir Hardie.

The biggest problem facing the ILP between 1895 and 1900 was opposition from the Lib-Lab leaders of the trade unions. However, attitudes softened because of legal challenges to the position of trade unions by employers that exposed their political vulnerability. The number of Lib-Lab MPs remained small; there were only thirteen after the 1892 election and this had shrunk to eleven by 1898. The Liberal Party seemed reluctant to back Lib-Lab candidates and this increased the annoyance of those trade unionists with political ambitions. It was only in 1900, when a number of trade unions agreed to set up the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) that an independent labour party with a real chance of gaining electoral success was born. Two LRC MPs were elected in the 1900 election (Keir Hardie and Richard Bell) compared to eight Lib-Lab MPs. The LRC picked up three more seats in by-elections in 1902 and 1903 (David Shackleton was elected for Clitheroe, Will Crooks for Woolwich and Arthur Henderson, Barnard Castle). In 1903, an electoral pact was made between the LRC and the Liberal Party when it was agreed that the Liberals would not oppose LRC candidates in thirty constituencies where it was thought that a LRC candidate was more likely than a Liberal to defeat the Conservatives.

By 1906, Arthur Henderson and Ramsay MacDonald, respectively chairman and secretary of the LRC, had created the skeleton of a national party machine. In the general election, the LRC won twenty-nine seats. The LRC was renamed ‘Labour Party’ in 1906. It had some success in the 1906-14 period wining 40 and then 42 seats in the 2 general elections in 1910 (the Liberal Party got 274 and 272 seats respectively). Then it grew in spectacular fashion after the First World War replacing the Liberal Party as the main party of opposition after the 1922 general elections (Labour won 142 seats and the Liberals 115) and won enough seats in the December 1923 general election to form the first Labour government. It was a minority government under Ramsay MacDonald and lasted less than a year.

 

General position 1903-14	It might have been expected that the Labour Party and the women’s suffrage movement would have been natural allies. However, this was not the case. The only group within the party to support and promote women’s suffrage was the ILP. As the women’s question grew more acute, Labour’s approach to it repeated that of the Conservative and Liberal parties. There were similar displays of male prejudice, a reluctance to divide the party by giving priority to women and similar calculations of political advantage. Martin Pugh recognises that the Labour Party was less divided than the other parties were over the issue and he points out that a small group of Labour MPs consistently voted for women’s suffrage as a group.
Negative reaction	Some leading members of the early Labour Party were hostile to suffragists because suffragettes were campaigning for the ‘equal franchise’ (the vote on the same basis as men) rather than the ‘universal franchise’ (votes for all). Socialists who did not believe in property qualifications were suspicious of a campaign that was led by middle class women, who had little in common with (and little apparent interest in) working class men. Indeed, some suffragists argued that they should have the vote because they were superior to members of the working class. Some individuals were particularly hostile to women’s suffrage. Pugh cites the comments made by John Bruce Glasier in his diaries and that Ramsay MacDonald, a lukewarm suffragist, was alienated by the WSPU’s militant campaign. Not just individuals were alienated by WSPU militancy. The Women’s Cooperative Guild was formed in 1883. It supported women’s suffrage and argued that women should have full equal rights with men. In 1909, the Women’s Cooperative Guild changed its demand for women’s suffrage to a demand for universal adult suffrage because it disliked the WSPU approach. The Guild also played an important role in the campaign for the Maternity Insurance Benefit. Many leading women trade unionists such as Margaret Bondfield and Mary Macarthur were active in the organisation. It also carried out research to obtain information that would support its campaigns. For example, Dr. Armand Routh provided evidence that working class women were much more likely to suffer still-births than non-working women. By 1910, the Women’s Co-operative Guild had 32,000 members. Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937)[4], one of the leading members of the Labour Party, had been a supporter of women’s suffrage since the 1890s. His mature position was outlined in detail in Socialism and Government (1909 edition) in which he argued that women’s suffrage was a necessary part of a socialist programme. If the sole function of the state had still been to protect its citizens from attack, he accepted, the classical objections to female enfranchisement might still be valid. In fact, the state was increasingly assuming the functions of the family. The family was not an exclusively masculine institution, and the socialist state could not be exclusively masculine either. Women’s suffrage was desirable because it would benefit the state, not because it would benefit women. It would benefit the state, not because women had the same rights as men, but because they performed different duties. This position was by no means identical with that of even the more moderate suffragists of the NUWSS but it was sympathetic enough to allow for a degree of cooperation between them. The WSPU was a different matter and MacDonald opposed the militant methods they used for the same reason that he opposed violence in trade union or international relations: because in his eyes, it was irrational and did more harm than good. He said, in the Leicester Pioneer (9th March 1912), “I have no objection to revolution, if it is necessary, but I have the very strongest objection to childishness masquerading as revolution, and all one can say about these window-breaking expeditions is that they are simply silly and provocative. I wish the working women of the country who really care about the vote…would come to London and tell these pettifogging middle class damsels who are going out with little hammers in their muffs that if they do no go home they will get their heads broken.” The essence of MacDonald’s argument was that women deserved the vote because of the unique role they played in the family. When the suffragettes appeared on the scene, it became less plausible to argue that the reason for giving women the vote lay in their role as guardians of the hearth and home. MacDonald’s opposition to the WSPU hardened as their campaign developed because their violent methods were merely the outward and visible sign of their revolt against precisely the conception of women in which MacDonald believed.
Positive reaction	Other leading members of the Labour Party were close supporters of the suffragists and reacted positively to the militancy of the WSPU. Keir Hardie, for example, was close to the Pankhursts and supported the militant campaign. The Labour MP, George Lansbury was an enthusiastic supporter of the WSPU. When the Conciliation Bill was defeated in early 1912, he was called upon by the Speaker to withdraw from the Commons following an altercation with Asquith in which he shook his fist at the prime minister and accused him of torturing innocent women. In October 1912, he circulated a memorandum to all Labour Party branches and affiliated organisations calling on all Labour MPs to vote against all government legislation until women were given the vote. He was condemned for disloyalty by the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party but this only made matters worse. In November 1912, he resigned his seat at Bow and Bromley and fought a by-election on the suffrage issue. Despite, or because of, the support of the NUWSS and WSPU, he lost. In 1912, two significant developments suggest that the party as a whole was becoming more inclined to give priority to women’s suffrage. At the annual conference in January, Arthur Henderson’s proposal that the Labour Party should only support an Adult Suffrage Bill if it included women’s suffrage was passed. The NUWSS dropped its non-party stance and made an electoral pact with the Labour Party establishing an Election Fighting Fund (EFF) to support Labour candidates in elections. Ironically, Ramsay MacDonald played a major role in working out the agreement for joint action in the spring and summer of 1912. By October 1912, Catherine Marshall, one of the suffragist leaders was able to claim, in a letter to MacDonald that £800 of suffragist money had been spent on Labour candidates[5]. The NUWSS leadership believed that joint campaigning with the Labour Party represented the most effective pressure suffragists could exert on the Liberal government. The purpose of EFF activity was twofold; first, to embarrass anti-suffragist cabinet ministers by ensuring they were challenged by Labour at future elections; and secondly, to strengthen the number of Labour MPs in the House of Commons. This policy caused friction within the NUWSS and between it and Liberal suffrage opinion. The subsequent formation of the Liberal Women’s Suffrage Union (LWSU) in early 1914 was an attempt to hold the loyalty of Liberal women who were also committed suffragists but who had difficulty in supporting an electoral alliance with Labour. The LWSU hoped to convince the NUWSS that it should restrict its EFF campaigning to anti-suffragist Cabinet ministers and not all anti-suffragist Liberal MPs and constantly argued against greater involvement in Labour politics. Initially, the NUWSS remained deaf to these pleas and relations between the two groups deteriorated rapidly after March 1914. A meeting between the two groups on 27th July 1914 proved inconclusive but its record suggests the growing influence of the LWSU in Liberal circles, the strength of the NUWSS’s commitment to its alliance with the Labour Party and the polarisation among women suffragists that was developing with the approach of the general election[6]. Keir Hardie (1856-1915)[7] was ardently committed to women’s suffrage: indeed, he depended partly on the financial support of women members of the Weavers’ Union in the early twentieth century[8]. The Cockermouth by-election in mid-1906 found Hardie under pressure from his party because he had show a singular lack of direction in the campaign in support of Bob Smillie, the Labour candidate. This arose from the failure of the Labour party to force an alliance with the suffragettes in the constituency. Indeed, the eventual eve-of-poll advice from the WSPU to the Cockermouth electorate was to vote Conservative. Since Hardie himself was so intimately involved with the suffragette leaders, and so often championed their cause, the odium of the suffragettes’ decision fell, rather unfairly, on him. Hardie had always been an uncompromising supporter of women’s rights. Votes for women had figured in his election addresses at Mid-Lanark and West Ham in the 1890s, and he had long established his reputation as one of the most determined and dependable advocates of women’s suffrage. His personal secretary, Mrs Margaret Travers Symons, the daughter of a wealthy Welsh architect, was a militant suffragette. Hardie claimed to link women’s rights with socialism: “the sex problem is at bottom the labour problem.” His support was based on broad democratic arguments that there were no political or moral grounds for discriminating between men and women. Apart from his special interest in women’s trade union, Hardie had no particular Labour or socialist slant to the arguments he used. He saw the granting of the franchise to all adult women, in parliamentary and local elections, as an essential key to a wider emancipation. Without the right to share in the exercise of power, women would always remain a subordinate and subjected section of the community, without rights, status or security. He had a personal reason for promoting rights for women in 1906, namely his close friendship with the Pankhurst family. He had been in touch with them since Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst became leading figures in the Manchester ILP in the early 1890s. He was closely in touch with Emmeline when she founded the WSPU in 1903. His attachment to Sylvia Pankhurst was of a different character and he drew closer to her in 1907 when she was imprisoned in Holloway. The significance of the affair between Sylvia and Hardie lent a powerful personal dimension to Hardie’s advocacy of women’s suffrage and massively reinforced the pressure that the women’s movement was bringing to bear on the Labour Party. However, there was a growing rift between the Labour Party and the WSPU coinciding with increasing dissatisfaction with Hardie’s leadership of the party. At the beginning of 1906, it was natural that the Labour Party should champion the cause of women. The ILP had several prominent women on its Executive Committee including Margaret Macmillan, Emmeline Pankhurst and Margaret Bondfield. The trade union movement regarded itself as the champion of women’s social rights. There was, initially, no protest when Hardie championed the cause in the House of Commons. However, by the summer of 1906, Hardie was absorbed, almost to the point of obsession, with the women’s suffrage question. No other Labour MP was so uninhibited in championing the women’s cause. Only Philip Snowden was so ardent in the cause, and he was soon to attack Hardie’s preoccupation with the women’s question. The potential division between Labour and the WSPU came in the summer of 1906 over the Cockermouth by-election. Instead of urging voters to support Labour, the WSPU concentrated on the campaign to turn out the Liberal candidate: in practice, that usually meant urging the electors to vote Conservative. After the by-election, Hardie was urged to devote more time to leading the Labour Party, and less to his contacts with the Pankhursts. He appears, very reluctantly, to have accepted that the Labour Party would have to cut itself adrift from the WSPU. The problem of his position as both party leader and spokesman for women’s rights came into the open at Labour annual conference in Belfast in January 1907. When the sensitive issue of the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill, recently introduced by the Liberal MP, W. H. Dickinson came up, a motion was carried against the executive’s advice to endorse the immediate and total enfranchisement of all women. Hardie’s reaction was to state that party conferences could not bind the party in Parliament and that MPs should be able to vote according to their ‘conscience’. In 1907 and 1908, Hardie upheld in the press the WSPU’s tactics of demanding votes for women on the same terms as those enjoyed by men. He pressed for the release of Christabel Pankhurst from prison and in 1909, joined a deputation to the Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone, demanding an inquiry into the conditions of suffragettes detailed in gaol. The forcible feeding instituted under the ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act in 1911 roused Hardie to a new fury on behalf of women’s equality. However, by 1909, Hardie was realistic enough to sense that women’s rights were a double-edged sword, especially in view of the disruptive tactics of the WSPU itself. The Labour Party was deriving little direct benefit from its involvement in the suffragette cause. He and Snowden continued to agitate on behalf of the women’s grievances in the Commons but even so, there was a gradual withdrawal by Hardie from the major involvement in the women’s causes that so dominated his life between 1906 and 1908. He now feared that the growing militancy of the WSPU would result in it becoming a small, sectarian and disruptive rump. Hardie was personally embarrassed in October 1908 by the actions of his personal secretary who used her position to interrupt a debate in the House with cries of ‘Votes for Women’ and in December 1911, she was convicted for obstruction during a stone-throwing demonstration. In 1912, Hardie emerged as the champion of George Lansbury, a passionate defender of women’s suffrage and critic of the Labour Party’s failure to oppose the government sufficiently over forced-feeding. The National Executive ruled that Lansbury could not be officially supported by the party when he resigned his seat in November 1912 to fight a by-election. Hardie defied the official party line, along with Snowden and campaigned for Lansbury. He argued that Labour should vote against the government’s Franchise Bill if female suffrage was not included. Lansbury lost and the whole affair was deeply saddening for Hardie. His attitude over the Franchise Bill strained relations with his Labour colleagues. He no longer captured the allegiance of the suffragettes either. Despite, his proven record of support for women’s suffrage, Hardie now found himself often heckled by women when he made speeches. They regarded him as a “man of words, not deed”, whose gradualism and constitutionalism had produced no tangible results.

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[1] David Morgan Suffragists and Liberals, Oxford University Press, 1975 remains important on the relationship between political parties and women suffragists.

[2] Laura Ugolini ‘It is Only Justice to Grant Women’s Suffrage: Independent Labour Party Men and Women’s Suffrage 1893-1905’ in Claire Eustance, Joan Ryan and Laura Ugolini (eds.) A Suffrage Reader: Charting Directions in British Suffrage History, Leicester University Press, 1999, pages 126-145.

[3] On the early development of the Labour Party see the contrasting views of Duncan Tanner Political Change and the Labour Party, Cambridge University Press, 1990 and Ross McKibbin The Evolution of the Labour Party 1910-1922, Oxford University Press, 1974. Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo (eds.) Labour’s First Century, Cambridge University Press, 2000 adopts a thematic approach with a useful discussion of Labour and gender, pages 191-220. Andrew Thorpe A History of the British Labour Party, Palgrave, 2^nd ed., 2001 is the most recent general study.

[4] David Marquand Ramsay MacDonald, Jonathan Cape, 1977, pages 147-150 is the clearest statement of MacDonald’s vacillating position. It also introduces the problems facing the emerging Labour Party in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

[5] Sandra Stanley Holton Feminism and Democracy, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pages 76-115 examines the creation of the electoral alliance and its operation in 1913 and 1914.

[6] The 1911 Parliament Act had reduced the length of time between general elections from a maximum of seven years to a maximum of five years. Given that the last general election was in late 1910, most people expected the Liberals to call an election in late 1914 or early 1915.

[7] Kenneth O. Morgan Keir Hardie: Radical and Socialist, Weidenfeld, 1975 is perhaps the best biography available though it is, in places, in need of revision.

[8] MPs were not paid for their services until after the 1911 Parliament Act.