The Suffragettes were now advised in many quarters that the militant tactics had forced the Government to the point of wishing to gain peace by granting votes to women, but that Cabinet Ministers were now afraid to do so lest they should seem to have given way to coercion. The contest for supreme power in the new Parliament being over, the women therefore decided to give the re-elected Government and the Parliamentary supporters of Women's Suffrage a quiet opportunity to settle the matter between them. On February 14th, the W. S. P. U. proclaimed a truce, and the Women's Freedom League followed suit.
During the past year more than twenty thousand meetings had been held by the W. S. P. U. alone, in addition to the many thousands organised by the other suffrage societies. Now that militancy was to be laid aside a period of even greater effort in the direction of building up the organisation and extending the purely educational work was to be entered upon.
Important developments were also to take place within Parliament itself. For many years a committee of Parliamentary supporters of Women's Suffrage, had existed. This was originally inaugurated on June 10th, 1887, under the influence of Miss Lydia Becker. It was strictly non-party, Members from all sections of the House having belonged to it. During the Parliament elected in 1906, however, the old committee had been allowed to lapse. The Liberal supporters of the question formed a Women's Suffrage Committee of their own, and, abandoning the attempt to secure votes for women, and seeking instead to extend the franchise all around, they had put forward Mr. Geoffrey Howard's Reform Bill, which had had no chance of being carried.
Now, largely owing to the efforts of Mr. H. N. Brailsford, a "Conciliation Committee" was formed with the object of uniting all sections of opinion favourable to women's enfranchisement and of coming to a common agreement upon some particular measure. The Earl of Lytton acted as Chairman of this Committee and Mr. Brailsford, himself, as Secretary. Its members consisted of twenty-five Liberals, seventeen Conservatives, six Irish Nationalists, and six members of the Labour Party. In discussing the terms of the Bill to be adopted, the Unionist members urged that it should be moderate, whilst the Liberals insisted that it must give no loophole for increasing the possibilities of plural voting or of adding to the power of the propertied classes. Though the majority of the women who attend the English Universities do so as a preparation for earning their livelihood, the Liberals did not wish to see the Franchise for University graduates, which is exercised by men, extended to women because, as they said, the poorest women do not graduate. For similar reasons they opposed the granting of votes to women under the Joint Household qualification, which applies only to houses rented at twenty pounds a year and upwards; under the Lodger franchise, which applies only to those who pay at least four shillings a week for an unfurnished room; and under the Ownership franchise. To overcome the objections of the self-styled democrats, the old Women's Enfranchisement Bill which would have given bare justice to women by extending the Parliamentary vote to them on equal terms with men was therefore abandoned, and a measure was drafted on the lines of the existing Municipal Franchise of which the basis is occupation and under which there is no qualification for Owners, Lodgers or Graduates.
Local Government was the earliest form of government in this country; it has been the most persistent and staple. Government from the centre was of later growth, and has many times been interrupted. The Municipal Franchise as it exists to-day is chiefly dependent on the Municipal Corporations Acts of 1835 and 1839. Before the passing of the first of these Acts women possessed and exercised equal voting rights with men in regard to matters of local Government, but the act of 1835 deprived them of these rights in all towns incorporated under it. In 1865, however, Women's Suffrage societies, demanding the admission of women to both national and local franchises, sprang into being, and when the Municipal Corporation's Act of 1869 was before Parliament, Mr. Jacob Bright succeeded in carrying an amendment to restore to women the rights of which the Act of 1835 had deprived them. It was a Liberal Government that framed and carried the Municipal Corporation's Act of 1869, and that Government accepted the amendment to extend its provisions to women. There was no suggestion then, nor has any since been made, that that franchise, when exercised either by men or women, is undemocratic when applied to municipal purposes.
Therefore, following the lines of the existing municipal franchise, the Conciliation Committee proposed to extend the Parliamentary vote to women householders and to women occupiers of business premises paying ten pounds a year and upwards. It was estimated that ninety-five per cent. of the women who would be enfranchised under this Conciliation Bill would be householders. To the householder franchise no monetary qualification whatsoever is attached, and every one who inhabits even a single room over which he or she has full control is counted as a householder.
As soon as this bill had been decided upon by the members of Parliament, who formed the Conciliation Committee, it was submitted to the various suffrage and other women's organisations, with a request to adopt it. Many of the societies, including the militants, at first demurred on the ground that though the number of women enfranchised would not differ greatly, the principle of equality between men and women, which the Women's Enfranchisement Bill had laid down, would be sacrificed by the new measure. Mr. Brailsford and others urged, however, that the Conciliation Bill was the only one to which the various sections in the House who supported Women's Suffrage would agree. They also pointed out that, as the women whom it was proposed to enfranchise were already upon the Municipal Register, no difficulty would be experienced in adding the lists of their names to the Parliamentary Register also before the next General Election, even should this take place within the year. Therefore, on condition that it should be passed during the session, all the various women's organisations worked wholeheartedly for the measure.
On June 18 the W. S. P. U. organised in support of the Conciliation Bill a greater procession of women than had ever yet been held, in which joined numbers of organisations, both national and international. Headed by a company of six hundred and seventeen women in white dresses carrying long gleaming silver staves tipped with broad arrows, each representing an imprisonment, the massed ranks with their gay banners took more than an hour and a half to pass a given point. The Great Albert Hall was able to contain but a section of the processionists.
No place for Women's Suffrage had been obtained in the private Members' ballot. The Conciliation Bill had been drafted in the hope that the Government would provide time for its discussion, and five days after the great procession, the Prime Minister, in reply to an influentially signed petition of Members of Parliament, promised to give facilities for the second reading of the Bill. At the same time he stated that he could not provide an early date for this, but, just as the militant forces were preparing for action, he agreed to fix Monday and Tuesday, July the 11th and 12th, for the discussion of the Bill.