At the General Election the figures had been:—

J. Bryce (L.)6,780
W. G. Black (U.)2,332
8,448

The Suffragists, too, had not been inactive, for Mrs. Henry Fawcett, and four of her colleagues, had written to the Prime Minister asking that they might be allowed to plead the cause of Woman's Suffrage at the Bar of the House. They pointed out that in 1688, Anne, the widow of Edward Fitz Harris, who was executed for treason in 1681, had been allowed to speak for herself and her children at the Bar, and that Mrs. Clarke, mistress of the Duke of York, had been summoned thither to give evidence in regard to the charges of corruption against the Duke. Nevertheless, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman refused to grant their request on the ground that there was no precedent for women to appear at the Bar of the House in support of a petition.

Meanwhile, since the so-called "Raid" on the House that had led to our imprisonment, candid friends had been constantly telling us that we had entirely alienated the sympathy of those who had hitherto supported the enfranchisement of women. Yet, even whilst the "Raid" had been in progress, a very much larger number of Parliamentary representatives were agreeing to give their places in the private Members' ballot to a Woman's Suffrage Bill than had ever done so before. When the result of the ballot became known, it was found, that for the first time in the history of the movement, the fortunate member who had secured the coveted first place out of 670 was willing to devote it to introducing a measure to give votes to women. It was a Liberal member, Mr. Dickinson, who had won the first place and had decided to introduce the Women's Enfranchisement Bill. The anti-Suffragists at once began to work actively against the measure and the first Women's Anti-Suffrage Society that had ever been formed was inaugurated to oppose it. Two petitions against the Women's Enfranchisement Bill, one of them said to be signed by 21,000 and the other by 16,500 persons, were presented to Parliament on March 5th and March 22nd. They were heralded by the jubilations of our opponents but when the petitions came to be examined they were rejected by the Petitions Committee of Parliament as "informal." This was because the separate sheets upon which the signatures had been written were not each headed by the prayer against the granting of Women's Suffrage, and there was consequently no evidence to prove that the signatories had known for what purpose their names were being collected. Afterwards Mr. J. M. Robertson examined the Anti-Suffrage Petitions and reported that "whole batches of signatures had been written in by a single hand," that "the batch work began on the very first sheets," and that it appeared as though the petitions "had been got up wholesale in this fashion." Mr. J. H. Wilson, M.P., Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Public Petitions, afterwards stated in the House of Commons, that the names of whole families of persons had undoubtedly been written in by the same hand. But even had these petitions been so evidently authentic as to have been accepted by Parliament without question, they would still have been quite insignificant as compared with the great petitions and memorials in support of Votes for Women, which had been presented year after year since 1866. But the days in which women might have won or lost the Parliamentary vote by petitioning had long gone by, and all politically minded women knew this.

For a Member of Parliament to declare himself in open opposition to Votes for Women, rendered him extremely unpopular, many of the anti-Suffragists, especially of the Liberal Party, now pretended that their reason for objecting to Mr. Dickinson's Bill was that they did not consider it to be a democratic measure. They declared that it would "disfranchise married women" would give the vote to women of wealth and property only and would exclude all those who had to work for their own living. So emphatically was this statement made that it was difficult to convince many people that the measure in question was the old equal Women's Enfranchisement Bill, and that there was no intention of introducing some new-fangled, fancy franchise. Yet as a matter of fact, Mr. Dickinson's Bill contained only a slight alteration in the wording, though not in the sense, of the last clause of the original measure. Instead of the phrase "any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding," which occurred in the original Bill and was intended to strike at the disability of coverture which affects married women, the words, "A woman shall not be disqualified by reason of marriage from being so registered and voting, notwithstanding any law or custom to the contrary," were substituted.

On moving the Second Reading of the Bill, Mr. Dickinson dealt especially with the objections of those who declared that the measure was anti-democratic. He stated, that in 1904, the women electors in his constituency of North St. Pancras had numbered 1,014. Of these women three per cent. had belonged to the wealthy upper class, thirty-seven per cent. to the middle class, and sixty per cent. to the working class; many of the latter being exceedingly poor.

When asked by the Secretary of the Local Women's Suffrage Society in his constituency of Dunfermline, whether he would support the second reading of the Bill, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had replied, "I will with much pleasure give my support to Mr. Dickinson's Bill when it comes before the House of Commons." Now that the moment for fulfilling his promise had arrived, however, the Prime Minister threw cold water upon the measure. "I am not very warmly enamoured of it," he said, and after casting doubt upon the accuracy of Mr. Dickinson's figures he added, that in his opinion, the Bill would merely "enfranchise a small minority of well-to-do women." Where the Prime Minister had led, the rank and file Anti-Suffragist Liberal Members of Parliament followed. Though they had neither facts nor figures of their own to quote in support of their contention, and, in face of both of Mr. Dickinson's figures and Mr. Snowden's reminder that the I. L. P. census of 1904 had shown that eighty-two per cent. of the women on the Municipal Register belonged to the working classes, they still continued to assert that only "a handful of propertied women" could obtain votes under this Bill. At the same time, although they themselves belonged almost exclusively to the middle and upper classes, they persistently stated their belief in the dangerous influence of the women who belonged to those same classes.

As the afternoon wore on attempts were made to move the closure of the debate in order that a vote on the Bill might be taken, but the Speaker refused to accept the resolution, and at five o'clock Mr. Rees, the Liberal Member for Montgomery Burghs talked the measure out after a five hours' debate. There was no protest from the Ladies' Gallery this time as the Suffragettes had all been rigorously excluded, but both Suffragettes and Suffragists combined in urging the Government to give another day for the discussion of the Bill. This they curtly refused, and though the Suffragettes had not agreed to accept the decision as final and intended to renew their demand until it was granted, Mr. Dickinson shortly afterwards withdrew his Bill in order to make way for a Women's Suffrage Resolution, a place for which had been obtained by Sir Charles M'Laren. No sooner had Mr. Dickinson's Bill been withdrawn and Sir Charles M'Laren's Resolution set down in its stead than it was blocked by a discreditable move on the part of a well known anti-Suffragist, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Maurice Levy. Taking advantage of a rule of the House of Commons by which a Resolution cannot be proceeded with, if a Bill dealing with a similar subject has been introduced, this Liberal member now brought forward a Bill which he never intended to be discussed to give a vote to every adult man and woman. Therefore Sir Charles M'Laren's Resolution was thus entirely shelved. This was not by any means the first time that the trick had been used in the case of a Women's Suffrage motion, but the device was acknowledged to be an unjustifiable abuse of the Procedure rules. Mr. Levy refused even the Speaker's request to withdraw his dummy Bill. Protests were raised on all sides of the House, because it was realised that, if the practice of bringing in dummy Bills to prevent discussion were to become common, the right of private Members to introduce Resolutions would be entirely destroyed. A Resolution embodying this point of view was therefore agreed to, and Mr. Asquith promised that the Government would take action in the matter.[20] Though the question was raised again three months later, however, the promise was never kept, and though the general feeling was that Mr. Levy had offended against the recognised etiquette of Parliament, it must be remembered, that, as the Standard put it "if the Government had chosen to exercise pressure Mr. Levy would have proved complaisant."[21]

But after all this was only a Resolution, and, realising that the Government, with practically all the time of Parliament at its disposal, could easily provide the few days necessary for carrying into Law a Woman's Suffrage measure, the Women's Social and Political Union were now preparing for further militant action.

On the day of the talking out of Mr. Dickinson's Bill a meeting had been held by the Union in the Exeter Hall at which Mrs. Pethick Lawrence had called for subscriptions to inaugurate a £20,000 campaign fund, and over £1,400 had been sent up to the platform during the meeting. On March 20th, 1907, the second Women's Parliament assembled in the Caxton Hall.[22] This Parliament was specially characterised by the large numbers of delegates from the provinces, amongst whom was a contingent of Lancashire Cotton Operatives, led by Annie Kenney and wearing their clogs and shawls. As before, the decision to carry a resolution to the Prime Minister was heralded with an enthusiasm that was almost fiercely overwhelming. Then, when Christabel Pankhurst called out from the platform, "Who will lead the deputation?" Lady Harberton, for many years a Suffragist of the old school, eagerly answered "I," and at once hundreds of women sprang up to follow her. As soon as the deputation gained the street the police began to push and hustle them, but though overwhelmingly outnumbered, they bravely strove hour after hour to carry out their purpose. Rigid lines of police drawn up across the approaches to the House prevented their even getting near to it, and though at one point a number of Lancashire mill hands drove up in a couple of waggonettes, and, being mistaken for sightseers, succeeded in reaching the Strangers' Entrance, they were discovered and beaten back.