The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI

by Unknown

On receiving this practically unanimous backing we further proceeded to recommend distinct forms of active service. The Local Government Board had addressed a circular to Lord Mayors and Mayors and Chairmen of Town and County Councils directing them at once to form Local Relief Committees to deal with any kind of distress caused by the war. We suggested to our societies that they should offer their services to help, each in its own district, in this national work. We also opened in different parts of the country forty workrooms in which women thrown out of work by the war found employment. We established bureaux for the registration of voluntary workers and gradually our work spread in all directions; help for the Belgian refugees, the starting of clubs and canteens for soldiers and sailors, clubs for soldiers' wives, work in connection with the Sailors' and Soldiers' Families Association, patrol work in the neighborhood of soldiers' training camps, Red Cross work, conducting French classes for our men in training. A very large number of our societies concentrated on maternity and child welfare work; others in country districts took up fruit picking and preserving in order to conserve the national food supplies. It is really impossible to mention all our various activities. These were included under a general heading adopted at a Provincial Council meeting held in November, 1914, urging "our societies and all members of the Union to continue by every means in their power all efforts which had for their object the sustaining of the vital energies of the Nation so long as such special efforts may be required."

The war work with which the name of the N.U.W.S.S. is most widely known was the formation of the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service. This was initiated and organised by the Hon. Sec. of our Scottish Federation, Dr. Elsie Inglis, and was backed by the whole of the N.U.W.S.S. (See Life of Dr. E. Inglis by Lady Frances Balfour.) Meeting at first with persistent snubbing from the Royal Army Medical Corps and the British Red Cross, Dr. Inglis formed her first hospital at the Abbaye de Royaument about thirty miles from Paris, officered entirely by women. Other units on similar lines quickly followed in France and Serbia. Their work was magnificent and was rapidly recognised as such by the military authorities and by all who came in contact with it. These hospitals probably produced by the example of their high standard of professional efficiency and personal devotion a permanent influence on the development of the women's movement in those countries where they were located. They received no farthing of government money but raised the 428,856 pounds, which their audited accounts show as their net total to August 3, 1919, entirely by private subscription from all over the world including, of course, the United States.

The N.U.W.S.S. were very early in the field of women's national work during the war because their members were already organised and accustomed to work together, but it is no exaggeration to say that the whole of the women of the country of all classes, suffragist and anti-suffragist, threw themselves into work for the nation in a way that had never been anticipated by those who had judged women by pre-war standards. Into munition work and all kinds of manufacturing activity they crowded in their thousands. They worked on the land and undertook many kinds of labour that had hitherto been supposed to be beyond their strength and capacity. By what was called the Treasury agreement of 1915 the Trade Unions were induced to suspend the operation of their rules excluding the employment of female labour. They bargained that women should be paid the same as men for the same output and the Government agreed not to use the women as a reservoir of cheap labour. Thus industrial liberty was ensured for women at least so long as the war should last.

All these things combined to produce an enormous effect on public opinion. Newspapers were full of the praises of women; financiers, statesmen, economists and politicians declared that without the aid of women it would be impossible to win the war. The anti-suffragism of Mr. Asquith even was beginning to crumble. In speaking of the heroic death of Edith Cavell in Belgium in October, 1915, he said: "She has taught the bravest men among us a supreme lesson of courage; yes ... and there are thousands of such women and a year ago we did not know it." Almost the whole of the press was on our side. The general tone was that it would be difficult to refuse woman a voice in the control of affairs after the splendid way in which she had justified her claim to it. We old suffragists felt that we were living in a new world where everyone agreed with us. Nevertheless, I do not believe we should have won the vote just when we did if it had not been that, through the action of the Government itself, it was absolutely necessary to introduce legislation in order to prevent the almost total disfranchisement of many millions of men who had been serving their country abroad in the Navy and Army, or in munition or other work which had withdrawn them from the places where they usually resided.

It may be necessary to explain to non-British readers that by far the most important qualification for the Parliamentary franchise in this country before 1918 was the occupation of premises, and before a man could be put on the register of voters it was necessary for its owner to prove "occupation" of these premises for twelve months previous to the last 15th of July. Seven out of every eight voters were placed on the register through this qualification. It was not a property qualification, for the tiniest cottage at a shilling a week could qualify its occupier for a vote if he had fulfilled the condition just described; and a man might be a millionaire without getting a vote if he were not in occupation of qualifying premises. Before the war the register of voters was kept up to date by annual revision. The war, however, made this difficult and the Government in 1915 gave directions that this annual revision should be abandoned. As the war went on, the existing register, therefore, rapidly became more and more out of date. Millions of the best men in the country had become disqualified through their war service by giving up their qualifying premises. The House of Commons again and again postponed the date of the General Election but the occasional by-elections which took place proved that there was no register in existence on which it would be morally possible to appeal to the country. The old, the feeble, the slacker, the crank, the conscientious objector would all be left in full strength and the fighting men would be disfranchised. A Parliament elected on such a register would, Mr. Asquith declared, be wholly lacking in moral authority. Therefore, by sheer necessity the Government was forced to introduce legislation dealing with the whole franchise question as it affected the male voter. A Coalition Government of the Liberal, Conservative and Labour Parties had been formed in 1915. This improved suffrage prospects, for many of the new men joining the Government, more especially Lord Robert Cecil, the Earl of Selborne and the Earl of Lytton, were warm supporters of our cause; while in making room for these newscomers, Mr. Asquith found it possible to dispense with the services of men of the type of Sir Charles Hobhouse, Mr. A. J. Pease and others who were our opponents. The formation of a Coalition Government helped us in another way. Neither of the great parties, Conservative and Liberal, had been unanimous on the women's question and the heads of these parties lived in terror of smashing up their party by pledging themselves to definite action on our side. Mr. Gladstone had broken up the Liberal Party in 1886 by advocating Irish Home Rule, and Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain had broken up the Conservative Party by advocating Protection in 1903-4. Each of these had, in consequence, a prolonged sojourn in the wilderness of Opposition. But now a Government was formed in which all the parties were represented except the Irish Nationalists, who had refused to join, and therefore our friends in both the old parties could give free rein to their disposition to make Women's Suffrage a reality without dread of bringing disaster on their organisations. The attitude of the N.U.W.S.S. and seventeen other Constitutional Suffrage Societies who had united to form a Consultative Committee, was quite clear as to the line we should take under these circumstances. In various ways and by repeated communications, letters, memorials and deputations we kept the Government informed that if their intentions with regard to the new register were limited simply to replacing upon it the names of the men who had lost their vote through their patriotic service, we should not press our own claim; but if on the other hand the Government determined to proceed by creating a new basis for the franchise, or changing the law in any way which would result in the addition of a large number of men to the register, without doing anything for women, we should use every means in our power within the limits of lawful agitation to bring the case for the enfranchisement of women before Parliament and the country.

Mr. Asquith answered a communication from us on these lines in May, 1916, with the greatest politeness but said that "no such legislation was at present in contemplation." However, within the next fortnight it was in contemplation and the Government made repeated attempts to deal with the situation by the creation of a special register. All the attempts were rejected by the House of Commons, which evidently wanted the subject dealt with on broader and more comprehensive lines. On August 14 Mr. Asquith, in introducing yet another Special Register Bill, announced his conversion to Women's Suffrage! This was an advent of great importance to our movement, for it virtually made the Liberal Party a Suffrage Party, but the Parliamentary difficulty was not removed, for the Government was still nibbling at the question by trying to deal with it by little amendments to the law relating to the registration of voters. At last a way out was devised. Mr. Walter Long, president of the local government board, a typical conservative country gentleman and at that time an anti-suffragist, made the suggestion that the whole question of Electoral Reform, including the enfranchisement of women, should be referred to a non-party Conference, consisting of members of both Houses of Parliament and presided over by the Speaker. Mr. Asquith concurred and Parliament agreed. Women's Suffrage was only one of many subjects connected with Electoral Reform which had to be dealt with by the Conference but it is not too much to say that if it had not been for the urgency of the claim of women to representation the Conference would never have been brought into existence.

The members of this Conference were chosen by the Speaker, who was careful to give equal representation to suffragists and anti-suffragists. Sir John Simon and Sir Willoughby Dickinson, members of the Conference, were very active and skilful in organising the forces in our favour. The Conference was called into being in October, 1916, and began its sittings at once. A ministerial crisis which occurred in December resulted in the resignation of Mr. Asquith and the appointment of Mr. Lloyd George as his successor. The Speaker enquired of the new Prime Minister if he desired the Conference to continue its labours. The reply was an emphatic affirmative. The Conference reported on January 27, 1917. Everyone knows that it recommended by a majority, some said a large majority, the granting of some measure of suffrage to women. Put as briefly as possible the franchise recommended for women was "household franchise," and for the purposes of the bill a woman was reckoned to be a householder not only if she was so in her own right but if she were the wife of a householder. An age limit of thirty was imposed upon women, not because it was in any way logical or reasonable but simply and solely in order to produce a constituency in which the men were not out-numbered by the women.

Some few weeks earlier we had heard on unimpeachable authority that the new Prime Minister was "very keen and very practical" on our question and was prepared to introduce legislation upon it without delay. He no doubt remembered how emphatically he had told us in 1911 of the extreme value of the promises which had been made to us by Mr. Asquith, and how in our meeting in the Albert Hall in the following March he had referred to the doubt which some suffragists had expressed upon the worth of these promises as "an imputation of deep dishonour which he absolutely declined to contemplate." He had in 1911 put into writing and sent as a message to the Common Cause, the official organ of the N.U.W.S.S., a statement of his conviction that Mr. Asquith's promises made the carrying of a Women's Suffrage amendment to next year's franchise bill a certainty and he had offered his personal help to bring this about. It has already been described how all these confident hopes had been brought to nought; but now, December, 1916, within a fortnight of becoming Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George let us know that he was not only ready but keen to go forward on practical lines. When Parliament met we asked the Prime Minister to receive a large and representative deputation of women who had worked for their country during the war. Our object was to ask him to legislate at once on the lines recommended by the Speaker's Conference but we were pushing an open door.

The new Prime Minister had arranged to receive us on March 29, 1917, and on the 28th Mr. Asquith had moved a resolution in the House of Commons, and his motion had been agreed to by 341 votes to 62, calling for the early introduction of legislation based on the recommendations of the Speaker's Conference. When our deputation waited on Mr. Lloyd George the following day he was able to inform us that he had already instructed the Government draftsman to draw up a bill on these lines. The debate in the House on March 28 had turned mainly on Women's Suffrage and the immense majority in support of Mr. Asquith's motion was rightly regarded as a suffrage triumph. Every leader of every party in the House of Commons had taken part in the debate and had expressed his support of the enfranchisement of women. The Government whips had not been put on and throughout the debates which followed the Bill was not treated as a Government but as a House of Commons measure. The victory, therefore, was all the more welcome to us because it was the result of a free vote of the House. Mr. Asquith's retraction of his former errors was quite handsome. He said, among other things, that his "eyes which for years in this matter had been clouded by fallacies and sealed by illusions at last had been opened to the truth." It required a European War on the vastest scale that the world had ever known to shake him out of his fallacies and illusions, and many of us felt that it would have been better if a less terrible convulsion had sufficed to awaken him, but still, now he was awakened, he was prompt in owning he had been in the wrong and therefore no more was to be said. The subsequent stages of this Representation of the People Bill were a series of triumphs for the suffrage cause. The second reading debate was taken on May 22d and 23d and again turned almost entirely on the women's question; the majority was 329 to 40. When the Bill was in Committee and the clauses enfranchising women were taken up on June 19 the majority was 385 to 55, or exactly seven to one. On June 20 a last division was made, when the number of anti-suffragists was only 17.

Our friends in the Speaker's Conference had so often impressed on us the danger of departing, even in the direction of obvious improvement, from its recommendations that we had carefully abstained from urging any deviation from them; but when the immense majorities just quoted showed that the Bill and our clauses in it were safe beyond a peradventure, we did press very strongly that the same principle should be applied to Municipal suffrage for women which had already been sanctioned by the House for the Parliamentary Suffrage, namely, that the wives of householders should be recognized as householders, which would entitle them to vote. On November 15 an amendment to this effect was moved but was not accepted by the Government. There were vigorous protests in our favour from all parts of the House and the debate on it was adjourned. During the interval the N.U.W.S.S. and other societies with whom we were cooperating bombarded the leader of the House and the Minister in charge of the bill with letters and telegrams in support of the amendment. These produced a good effect and on November 20, Government opposition having been withdrawn, the amendment was agreed to without a division. Thus without the existence of a single woman voter but on the strength of her coming into existence within the next few months, the women on the Municipal registers of Great Britain and Ireland were increased in number from about one million to over eight-and-a-half millions. And yet Lord Bryce and the other anti-suffragists assured us that the vote would make no difference!