Women's Suffrage: A Short History of a Great Movement

by Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett

To this was added:—

"That while condemning methods of violence the Council of the N.U.W.S.S. also protests most earnestly against the manner in which the whole Suffrage agitation has been handled by the responsible Government."

The National Union has not thought it necessary publicly to protest against every individual act of violence. Having definitely and in a full Council, where all the societies in the Union are represented in proportion to their membership, put upon record that they "strongly condemn the use of violence in political propaganda," it appears unnecessary to asseverate that they condemn individual acts of violence. There is a remarkable passage in one of Cromwell's letters explaining why that which is gained by force is of little value in comparison with that which is conceded to the claims of justice and reason. "Things obtained by force," he wrote, "though never so good in themselves, would be both less to their honour and less likely to last than concessions made to argument and reason." "What we gain in a free way is better than twice as much in a forced, and will be more truly ours and our posterity's."[38] The practical example of male revolutionists is often cited to the contrary; but with all due respect to the other sex, is not their example too often an example of how not to do it? The Russian revolution, for instance, seems to have thrown the political development of Russia into a vicious circle: "we murder you because you and your like have murdered us," and thus it goes on in an endless vista like one mirror reflecting another. I admit fully that the kind and degree of violence carried out by the so-called "suffragettes" is of the mildest description; a few panes of glass have been broken, and meetings have been disturbed, but no one has suffered in life or limb; our great movement towards freedom has not been stained by serious crime. Compared with the Irish Nationalist movement in the 'eighties, or the recent unrest in India, the so-called "violence" of the suffragettes is absolutely negligible in degree, except as an indication of their frame of mind.

Far more violence has been suffered by the suffragettes than they have caused their opponents to suffer. The violence of the stewards at Liberal meetings in throwing out either men or women who dared to ask questions about women's suffrage has been most discreditable. It may be hoped it has been checked by an action claiming damages brought on at the Leeds Assizes in March 1911 on behalf of a man who had had his leg broken by the violence with which he had been thrown out of a meeting at Bradford by Liberal stewards, in the previous November. The judge ruled that his ejection from the meeting was in itself unlawful, and the only question he left to the jury was to assess damages. The jury awarded the plaintiff £100; this decision was appealed against, but the appeal was withdrawn in October 1911.[39]

Mark Twain once wrote of the women suffragists in his own country, "For forty years they have swept an imposingly large number of unfair laws from the statute books of America. In this brief time these serfs have set themselves free—essentially. Men could not have done as much for themselves in that time without bloodshed, at least they never have, and that is an argument that they didn't know how."[40]

Perhaps the mild degree of violence perpetrated by the suffragettes was intended to lower our sex pride; we were going to show the world how to gain reforms without violence, without killing people and blowing up buildings, and doing the other silly things that men have done when they wanted the laws altered. Lord Acton once wrote: "It seems to be a law of political evolution that no great advance in human freedom can be gained except after the display of some kind of violence." We wanted to show that we could make the grand advance in human freedom, at which we aimed without the display of any kind of violence. We have been disappointed in that ambition, but we may still lay the flattering unction to our souls that the violence offered has not been formidable, and that the fiercest of the suffragettes have been far more ready to suffer pain than to inflict it. What those endured who underwent the hunger strike and the anguish of forcible feeding can hardly be overestimated. Their courage made a very deep impression on the public and touched the imagination of the whole country.

Of course a very different measure is applied to men and women in these matters. Women are expected to be able to bear every kind of injustice without even "a choleric word"; if men riot when they do not get what they want they are leniently judged, and excesses of which they may be guilty are excused in the House of Commons, in the press, and on the bench on the plea of political excitement. Compare the line of the press on the strike riots in Wales and elsewhere with the tone of the same papers on the comparatively infinitesimal degree of violence shown by the militant suffragists. No one has been more severe in his condemnation of militantism than Mr. Churchill, but speaking in the House of Commons in August 8, 1911, about the violent riots in connection with Parliamentary Reform in 1832, he is reported to have said: "It is true there was rioting in 1832, but the people had no votes then, and had very little choice as to the alternatives they should adopt." If this is a good argument, why not extend its application to the militant suffragists?

The use of physical violence by the militant societies was not the only difference between them and the National Union. The two groups between 1905 and 1911 adopted different election policies. The militants believed, and they had much ground for their belief, that the only chance of a Women's Suffrage Bill being carried into law lay in its adoption by one or other of the great political parties as a party question. The private member, they urged, had no longer a chance of passing an important measure; it must be backed by a Government. Hence they concluded that the individual member of Parliament was of no particular consequence, and they concentrated their efforts at each electoral contest in endeavouring to coerce the Government of the day to take up the suffrage cause. Their cry in every election was "Keep the Liberal out," not, as they asserted, from party motives, but because the Government of the day, and the Government alone, had the power to pass a Suffrage Bill; and as long as any Government declined to take up suffrage they would have to encounter all the opposition which the militants could command. In carrying out this policy they opposed the strongest supporters of women's suffrage if they were also supporters of the Government.

The National Union adopted a different election policy—that of obtaining declarations of opinion from all candidates at each election and supporting the man, independent of party, who gave the most satisfactory assurances of support. In the view of the National Union this policy was infinitely more adapted to the facts of the situation than that adopted by the militants. What was desired was that the electorate should be educated in the principles of women's suffrage, and made to understand what women wanted, and why they wanted it; and electors were much more likely to approach the subject in a reasonable frame of mind if they had not been thrown into a violent rage by what they considered an unfair attack upon their own party. To this it was replied that only the Liberals were enraged and that the Conservatives would be correspondingly conciliated. It did not appear, however, that this was actually the case. The Conservatives were not slow to see that their immunity from attack was only temporary; when their turn came to have a Government in power the cry would be changed to "Keep the Conservative out." And then having profoundly irritated one half of the electorate, the militants would go on to irritate the other half. What the National Union aimed at was the creation in each constituency of a Women's Suffrage society on non-party lines, which should by meetings, articles, and educational propaganda of all kinds create so strong a feeling in favour of women's suffrage as to make party managers on both sides realise, in choosing candidates, that they would have a better chance of success with a man who was a suffragist than with a man who was an anti-suffragist.

The whole Parliamentary situation was altered when in November 1910, and again more explicitly in June and August 1911, Mr. Asquith promised on behalf of the Government that on certain conditions they would grant time for all the stages of a Women's Suffrage Bill during this Parliament. This removed the basis on which the militant societies had founded their election policy; it no longer was an impossibility for a private member to carry a Reform Bill, and it became obvious that the road to success lay in endeavouring, as far as possible, to promote the return of men of all parties to the House of Commons who were genuine suffragists. The Women's Social and Political Union and the Freedom League appreciated the importance of this change, and early in 1911 they definitely suspended militant action, and abandoned their original election policy. There was thus harmony in methods as well as unity of aims between the Suffrage Societies until this harmony was disturbed by the events to be described in the next chapter.