In the nineteenth century, women had no place in national politics. They were not eligible to run for Parliament and were not even allowed to vote. The assumption was that women did not need to vote because their husbands would handle political issues. A woman’s role was seen as child-rearing and taking care of the home.
Women were not officially banned from voting in Great Britain until the 1832 Reform Act and the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act
Voting for women was part of a gradual improvement in women’s rights that had been going on throughout the 19th century. The movement also campaigned for the right to divorce a husband, the right to education, and the right to have a job such as a doctor. Many women, however, saw the vote as a vital achievement that would give them a say in the laws affecting their lives.
Because of the Industrial Revolution, many women had full-time employment, which allowed them to discuss political and social issues in large organised groups.
The movement to gain women’s votes had two wings: the suffragists and the suffragettes. The suffragists originated in the mid-nineteenth century, while the suffragettes came into being in 1903.
It was in 1866 that organised campaigns for women’s suffrage first appeared, and in 1888, women began to be allowed to vote in local elections. When parliamentary reform was being debated in 1867, MP John Stuart Mill became the first person in the history of Parliament to call for women to be given the right to vote, vigorously defending this position in subsequent debates. The amendment was rejected by 194 votes to 73.
The suffragists
In the wake of this defeat, the London Society for Women’s Suffrage was formed. Similar Women’s Suffrage groups were formed all over Britain. In 1897, seventeen of these individual groups joined together to form the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) under the leadership of Millicent Fawcett.
The NUWSS wanted the vote for middle-class property-owning women. They believed they would achieve their goal using peaceful tactics—nonviolent demonstrations, petitions, and lobbying MPs. Fawcett believed that if the organisation was seen to be intelligent, polite, and law-abiding, then women would prove themselves responsible enough to participate fully in politics.
The leadership of the suffragists was exclusively middle-class, but some of the more radical members recognised early on that the movement needed the support of working-class women. The issue of the franchise was drawing women from various sections of society together and giving them an identity that they had lacked until that time.
By 1900, there was already evidence that many Members of Parliament had been won over. Several Bills in favour of women’s suffrage gained considerable support in Parliament, though not enough to pass. Some believed it was only a matter of time before women would gain the vote.
The suffragettes
The suffragettes, a name given to them by the Daily Mail newspaper, were born out of the suffragist movement. Emmeline Pankhurst, a member of the Manchester suffragist group, had grown tired of the middle-class, respectable and slow tactics of the NUWSS. In 1903 she decided to break with the NUWSS and set up a separate society. This became known as the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).
Mrs Pankhurst believed it would take an active organisation of young working-class women to draw attention to the cause. The suffragettes’ motto was “deeds, not words.”
Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel disagreed with other members of the WSPU’s executive board in 1907, forcing the organisation to split into two groups. Those who left formed the Women’s Freedom League, while the Pankhursts and their supporters established a greater hold on the WSPU’s workings.
The three groups disagreed over tactics, but their message was consistent, and they regularly worked together. Despite opposition, the argument for women’s suffrage seemed to be winning support. By 1909, the WSPU had branches all over the country and published a newspaper called Votes for Women, which sold 20,000 copies each week. The NUWSS was also flourishing, with a rising membership and an efficient nationwide organisation.
Bombings
Until 1912, the campaigning was largely within the law, mainly chaining themselves to railings and disturbing the peace. From 1912 onwards, they became more militant and violent in their methods of campaigning. Activism grew to include planting bombs, smashing shop windows and acts of arson. They disrupted communications networks by cutting telephone and telegraph wires and burning post boxes.
Law-breaking, violence and hunger strikes all became part of this society’s campaign tactics.
Many culturally significant buildings and items were attacked, including paintings, statues, and even the jewel house of the Tower of London Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus was slashed in the National Gallery. Glasgow Art Gallery had its glass cases smashed in 1912, and in 1914, mummy cases were defaced in the British Museum. At Kew Gardens in London, an orchid house was attacked, and its tea room was burned down.
Bombs and incendiary devices were detonated at churches, banks, railway stations and even Westminster Abbey. Saunderton railway station and Croxley station near Watford were destroyed. On 21 May, a bomb exploded at the Royal Astronomical Observatory in Edinburgh, and that summer a bomb was planted outside the Bank of England. In November 1913, a 3-inch pipe bomb exploded in the Glass House of Alexandra Park in Manchester. Another bomb damaged the home of Chancellor David Lloyd George.
The rough treatment of many suffragettes arrested and jailed during the course of their protests also won increasing sympathy and support from the public.
Finally
When World War I broke out in 1914, the whole suffrage movement immediately scaled down and even suspended some of its activities in the face of a greater threat to the nation. The commendable behaviour also proved that the women were far from unreasonable.
At the end of the war, in 1918, the Representation of the People Act gave women over 30 the vote, which was extended to all women over 21 in 1928.
