The Women's Victory—and After: Personal Reminiscences, 1911-1918

by Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett

3. The Government is in favour of widows' pensions in principle. By constant pressure we mean to make the House of Commons turn principle into practice. We demand pensions for civilian widows.

4. Women must speak for themselves as well as vote. We want to extend the women's franchise, and we are determined that women candidates holding our equality programme shall be returned to Parliament at the next election.

5. At present women are not legally recognized as the guardians of their children. We are working to secure equal rights of guardianship for both parents.

6. Lastly, we are demanding the opening of the legal professions to women. We wish to enable women to become solicitors, barristers, and magistrates.

The walls of our Jericho have not fallen at the first blast of our trumpet, but we have made great progress in promoting the principle of equal pay for equal work, and with the familiarizing of the British public with women as candidates for Parliament. Since the General Election two or three women have been candidates, and one, Lady Astor, has been returned by an immense majority.

Another important success in 1919 remains to be chronicled. It is the inclusion in the Charter of the League of Nations of a clause rendering women, equally with men, eligible to all appointments in connection with the League, including the Secretariat. This clause was inserted during the Paris negotiations after deputations of suffragists from the Allied Nations and the U.S.A. had waited upon all the Plenipotentiaries. They were most cordially and sympathetically received; but the definite success of their efforts was in the main due to the active and whole-hearted support of President Wilson, Lord Robert Cecil, and M. Venizelos.

In the passing by the Government of their Sex Disqualification Removal Act more has been done than we ventured to ask for in the sixth item on our programme—not a bad harvest for one Session, when we remember the twelve years' work necessary to get the Midwives Bill of 1902 passed into law, or the thirty-two years' hard labour before a Nurse's Registration Bill was turned into an Act.

I do not propose in this brief chronicle to enter into a detailed description of the differences between the Government Bill and the Women's Emancipation Bill introduced by the Labour Party, and carried through all its stages in the House of Commons, notwithstanding Government opposition. The Labour Party's Bill after this triumph was torpedoed in the House of Lords, and the Government Bill was pushed forward in its place, and eventually carried into law. The Bill of the Labour Party was much more comprehensive and sweeping; it did what it professed to do, and removed completely every legal inequality between men and women, including placing women on the parliamentary register on the same terms as men. This was probably the reason why the Government objected to its passing into law, and got it defeated in the House of Lords. For, according to all precedent, a large extension of the electorate should be followed as soon as possible by a General Election; and it is not very wonderful that the Government did not desire this under present circumstances, and while the new Parliament had been less than a year in existence. In some respects the Government Bill goes beyond No. 6 in the demands of the N.U.S.E.C. It opens to women, whether married or unmarried, the duty, within certain limits, of sitting on juries and acting as magistrates. It makes it clear to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge that they have the power, when they choose to use it, of admitting women to membership. It opens the legal profession to women. But its most disappointing provision relates to the entry of women in the Civil Service. It opens the Civil Service to them, but with certain restrictions. It does not proceed on the lines of the Government promise of November, 1918, "to remove all existing inequalities in the law between men and women." The Government reserve for themselves the right in this matter to proceed by Orders in Council. It is true the Solicitor-General said in the House on October 28th, 1919, that he wanted to "have the power to differentiate somewhat in favour of women in order to give them a better and more equal opportunity than they have at the present time." We are frankly suspicious of these offers of something better than equality. Equality before the law is a hundred times more stable guarantee for justice than favouritism. Women over and over again have said they are not out for privilege, but for equality of opportunity. Major Hills, who was in charge of the amendments to the Bill promoted by the women's societies, said with brutal frankness that the meaning of the clauses promoted by the Government was "that all the higher-paid posts in the Civil Service will continue to be reserved to men." These Orders in Council will have to be closely scrutinized.

Nevertheless, when we remember that between 1902 and 1914 only two really important Acts bearing specially upon the welfare and status of women had been passed—namely, the Midwives Act, 1902, and the group of Acts, dating from 1907 to 1914, dealing with the qualification of women as candidates in local elections—and that since the passing of the Reform Act of 1918 at least seven important measures effecting large improvements in the status of women have rapidly gone through all their stages in both Houses of Parliament, we shall not be slow to appreciate the fact that the women's vote has made a very big difference indeed. The Act which rendered women eligible for Parliament, introduced in the Commons late in the autumn Session of 1918, went through both Houses in about a fortnight. In the Lords it was adopted without opposition.