By Katherine Cornell
Edited by Jack McLean and Mark Potter
Was the First World War more important than the pre-war suffrage movement in securing the 1918 Representation of the People Act?
A period characterised by the emergence of democracy and redefinition of ideas relating to
citizenship and gender, 1832 to 1918 bore witness to a vast number of cultural and intellectual changes, culminating in the 1918 Representation of the People Act. Nearly tripling the electorate by granting the vote to all men over the age of twenty-one and enfranchising ratepaying women over the age of thirty, the most significant legacy of the Representation of the People Act was to dispel the instinctively masculine idea of democracy which had dominated nineteenth-century British politics. Several factors contributed to the extension of the franchise in 1918, most notably the pre-war suffrage campaign and the shifting concept of citizenship and service to the nation made possible by the First World War. Literature on the pre-war suffrage campaign focuses heavily on female enfranchisement, with the expansion of the electorate to include two-thirds of Britain’s total population of women in 1918 traditionally explained as being a by-product of universal male suffrage. While acknowledging the validity of this argument, it is necessary to place the granting of women’s suffrage within the broader context of the culture of total war. Drawing on research by post-war scholars such as Nicoletta Gullace, this thesis will argue that, although the intellectual case for female enfranchisement had undoubtedly been made by 1914, ultimately, the First World War provided the conditions in which the inclusion of some 8.5 million women to the electorate could be justified. The most significant of these wartime repercussions was creating a coalition government that saw Arthur Henderson, an advocate of women’s suffrage, appointed to the multiparty cabinet. This is in addition to, the cessation of suffragette violence in response to the outbreak of war, the effect on the portrayal of the women’s suffrage movement in the British press, and, most importantly, the redefinition of citizenship undermined the gendered basis of the franchise in post-war Britain.
While less important than the First World War, it is first necessary to consider the role of the
pre-war suffrage movement in laying the groundwork for the resumption of talks in Parliament about the extension of the franchise in 1918. The Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 are exemplary of how suffrage qualifications based on gender disadvantaged women
simultaneously coincided with as a significant number of men were being excluded from the
electorate.[1] In response, organised campaigns for women’s suffrage gained enormous
momentum during this period, most notable among them the National Union of Women’s
Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), formed in 1897 by Millicent Fawcett, and the Women’s Social
and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903. Susan Kingsley Kent
has emphasised the impact of the Contagious Diseases Acts on the effectiveness of suffrage
propaganda, arguing that women’s vehement opposition to the Contagious Diseases Acts
played a crucial part in the pre-war suffrage movement and ultimately sustained the campaign for women’s suffrage throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Moreover, the arguments put forward by opponents of the Contagious Diseases Acts helped to establish a framework for the case made by those lobbying for women’s suffrage so that, by
1914, issues relating to female sexual morality were regularly discussed in the literature of
most suffrage organisations.[2] The propaganda campaign launched by the NUWSS was
remarkably effective, and their weekly publication The Common Cause reached ten-thousand
readers by 1912, an extensive circulation in early twentieth-century Britain.[3] That same year, in an electoral climate where the Liberals were disinclined to support women’s suffrage, the NUWSS formed an alliance with Labour that saw the creation of the Election Fighting Fund (EFF). This organisation raised funds to support Labour candidates in exchange for a promise by the latter to support both male and female enfranchisement. As argued by Dawn Langan Teele, the pressure this electoral strategy put the Liberals under was of central importance to women’s inclusion in the 1918 Representation of the People Act.[4] However, it was not until 1915, in total war, that the real significance of the alliance between Labour and the NUWSS became apparent.
While too simplistic a view to argue that the First World War alone secured women’s suffrage
in 1918, it did provide the conditions in which the exact terms of the extension of the franchise could be resolved.[5] Under Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, a multiparty wartime cabinet was formed which saw Labour politician Arthur Henderson, a central figure in the alliance between Labour and the NUWSS, appointed to government. In a confidential report issued to the cabinet on May 12 1916, Henderson proposed a series of electoral reforms, particularly ‘“making twenty-five the age at which suffrage could be exercised in the case of women”’.[6] These recommendations were to form the basis of the electoral reform measures implemented in 1918. However, it was Henderson’s persistent lobbying for female suffrage in the months leading up to the 1916-17 Speaker’s Conference on Electoral Reform and the threat of resignation from the cabinet if women were not included in discussions about the expansion of the franchise that proved pivotal to securing women’s place in the 1918 Representation of the People Act.[7] For Henderson to have been as strong an advocate for female enfranchisement as he was in wartime was a direct result of his involvement with the EFF.
Of equal importance when considering the role of the First World War in securing the 1918
Representation of the People Act was the cessation of suffragette violence in response to the
outbreak of war. The violent campaign waged by the WSPU after 1909 involved, among other
acts of militancy, the destruction of property, most notably the bombing of the unoccupied
home of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, in 1913, and arson. The radical tactics adopted by the suffragettes earned the WSPU the resentment and hostility of the press and public alike.[8] In 1917 the New Statesman condemned the ‘“obstructive effect”’ of WSPU violence in the pre-war years, suggesting that the First World War’s ‘“best help”’ to the campaign was ‘“the excuse with which it provided the militants for stopping militancy”’.[9] In concurrence with this claim, several weeks later the Daily Chronicle intimated that, were it not for ‘“the antagonism aroused at Westminster and in the country by the methods of the Pankhurst agitation”’, ‘“some measure”’ of enfranchisement ‘“would almost certainly have become law ere now”’.[10] Accounts such as these indicate the damaging effect of WSPU militarism on the reputation of the women’s suffrage movement as a whole, as reported by the British press. The shift in the Pankhurst’s focus from political activism to fervent patriotism after 1914 greatly benefited their campaign by demonstrating their loyalty to the nation and undermining the commonly held perception of the pre-war suffrage campaign as a movement of “hysterical women”.[11]
However, the most significant of the effects of the First World War on women’s suffrage was
the redefinition of citizenship during wartime that made patriotic service the qualification for
suffrage, thereby undermining the gendered basis of the franchise. In the 1870s, two-thirds of adult men were excluded from the electorate on the same terms as women. This strengthened the case made by opponents of female enfranchisement that, since they enjoyed virtual representation in the same way as the thousands of men who did not have the vote, women had no cause for complaint.[12] Moreover, the belief that ‘“the emancipating process”’ had ‘“reached the limits fixed by the physical constitution of women”’ by the 1890s strengthened the anti-suffrage argument that women lacked the physical capacity to participate in public politics.[13] With the outbreak of war in 1914 and granting universal male suffrage four years later, these arguments could no longer be sustained. The physical nature of the work carried out in wartime by female munitions workers, ambulance drivers and military nurses subverted gender norms, thereby challenging the notion that men and women were endowed with fundamentally different physical and intellectual qualities to carry out their separate roles in society. The correlation between masculinity and citizenship was further undermined by excluding many conscientious objectors from the electorate according to the terms of the 1918 Representation of the People Act.
Moreover, as early as 1916, when discussions about the extension of the franchise began to be
resumed in Parliament, a confidential report titled ‘The Revision of the National Register is
Essential’ was leaked to the Times newspaper. This report outlined the need for electoral reform to enfranchise returning soldiers.[14] As per the old electoral system which depended on residency, these men would otherwise have lost the vote. The electoral concessions made to men in the immediate aftermath of the First World War profoundly impacted the case for
female enfranchisement. Although to view the granting of women’s suffrage in 1918 merely
as a by-product of universal male suffrage overstates the case, it was only in the context of total war that women were provided with the auspicious circumstances under which their demands for suffrage, on the same terms as men, could more readily be justified.[15]
To conclude, although the role of the pre-war suffrage campaign in laying the groundwork for the introduction of electoral reform in 1918 should by no means be minimised, ultimately, the First World War was of greater importance in that it provided the conditions in which a political stalemate could be resolved.[16] The appointment of Arthur Henderson to Asquith’s multiparty wartime cabinet provided the NUWSS with a spokesman within Parliament. The WSPU’s abandonment of their pre-war militancy further strengthened the case for female
enfranchisement by enabling women to demonstrate their civic worth and patriotism. However, while recognising the limitations of these arguments in that it was not until 1928 that women gained the vote on the same terms as men, it was the wartime renegotiation of ideas relating to citizenship and service to the nation which ultimately made the difference for men and women alike.
Notes
[1] Angela V. John and Claire Eustance, ‘Shared Histories – Differing Identities: Introducing
Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage’ in Angela V. John and Claire Eustance (eds), The Men’s Share? Masculinities, Male Support and Women’s Suffrage in Britain, 1890-1920 (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 8.
[2] Susan Kingsley Kent, Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914 (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 165.
[3] Harold Smith, The British Women’s Suffrage Campaign, 1866-1928 (London: Pearson, 2007), p. 26.
[4] Dawn Langan Teele, ‘Ordinary Democratization: The Electoral Strategy that Won British Women the Vote’, Politics and Society, 42/4 (2014), pp. 537-538.
[5] Martin Pugh, The March of the Women: A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage, 1866-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 59.
[6] Extract from Arthur Henderson’s memo to the Wartime Cabinet; National Archives, UK. Cabinet Papers: CAB/37/147/31/12-May-1916; quoted in Teele, ‘Ordinary Democratization: The Electoral Strategy that Won British Women the Vote’, pp. 553-554.
[7] Teele, ‘Ordinary Democratization: The Electoral Strategy that Won British Women the Vote’, p. 540.
[8] Nicoletta F. Gullace, “The Blood of Our Sons”. Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship During the Great War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 1-2.
[9] Extract from the New Statesman, 3 June 1917, p. 268; quoted in Adrian Bingham, ‘The British Press and the 1918 Reform Act’, Parliamentary History, 37/1 (2018), pp. 158-159.
[10] Extract from the Daily Chronicle, 21 June 1917, p. 2; quoted in Bingham, ‘The British Press and the 1918 Reform Act’, p. 158.
[11] Extract from a police report on a suffragette meeting at Hampstead Town Hall with speakers including Emmeline Pankhurst, 14 February 1913; National Archives, UK. Catalogue ref: HO 45/10695/231366.
[12] Pugh, The March of the Women: A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage, 1866-1914, p. 36.
[13] Extract from a speech by Mrs Humphrey Ward to the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League, 1908; quoted in Pugh, The March of the Women: A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage, 1866-1914, p. 56.
[14] Teele, ‘Ordinary Democratization: The Electoral Strategy That Won British Women the Vote’, p. 553.
[15] Pugh, The March of the Women: A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage, 1866-1914, p. 40.
[16] Bingham, ‘The British Press and the 1918 Reform Act’, p. 151.
Bibliography
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“Extract from Arthur Henderson’s memo to the Wartime Cabinet”, National Archives
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