By Kirsty Neale
Edited by Krutika Sharma 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?(I)
“Let us show ourselves worthy of citizenship whether our claim to it be recognised or not”
declared Millicent Garrett Fawcett in 1914.[1] This famous speech underlined the idea that
women deserved to be included in the franchise because of their contributions to the community. The First World War was not an exception to this. Women played a major role in
supporting the national war effort. The First World War was more important than the pre-war suffrage movement in securing the 1918 Representation of the People Act because it changed perceptions of women’s work and made claims about women’s service more relevant to the vote. Thus, the war shifted attitudes from thinking that women’s employment was an indicator of what was wrong with the country to perceiving it as a patriotic contribution to be celebrated. The war period (1914-1918) brought this change by altering the basis of British citizenship; shifting perceptions of women’s employment; politicising the domestic sphere; undermining the pre-war anti-suffrage arguments and removing opposition to the suffrage campaign.
The war helped to secure the 1918 Act because it altered the basis of British citizenship. Before the war, the Third Reform Act (1884) was in place and excluded forty per cent of male
householders over the age of twenty-one.[2] This criterion abandoned the poorest in society and servicemen. The First World War altered the basis of British citizenship because the
government recognised patriotic service, rather than manliness or property, as the basis of the franchise.[3] Patriotic service could be carried out by anyone and was not limited by class, gender or background. This change undermined the classist and gendered premises of the vote which were evident before 1918. Even though the war exemplified new ways in which women contributed to society, it was the pre-war suffrage movement which founded the argument around citizenship. For example, pre-war suffragists like Charlotte Despard spoke of women demonstrating themselves as capable citizens by paying taxes and carrying out responsibilities like social reform.[4] During the war, suffragists drew upon previous arguments and linked the active role of women in society with citizenship. Whilst the pre-war movement established a claim to the franchise based on women’s service, the First World War made these demands to the wider suffrage debate more convincing because women were able to prove their worth as citizens through patriotic service.
Perceptions of women’s employment and the scale of women taking up paid work shifted in
the war period. These changes were important in securing the 1918 Act because women were
able to justify their suffrage claims by demonstrating their efforts across a wide range of
industries. Statistics revealed the vast number of women who took up paid work temporarily
and those who were already hired in the pre-war period. Pugh noted a 23.7 per cent increase in women’s employment from 4.92 million before the war to 6.19 million by July 1918.[5] It is important to consider the significant number of women who were employed before 1914
because these were predominately based within textiles, cleaning, teaching, nursing and
midwifery.[6] The war changed perceptions of women’s employment because it highlighted the fact that many women worked before the war and contributed to specific trades.
With a mobilised force of approximately 700,000 soldiers, women had to take up well-
respected positions which men traditionally held in commercial firms and the civil service.[7]
Substitution of women in such roles strengthened suffrage claims because there was a less
obvious distinction between “women’s work” and “men’s work” as there had been in 1914.
This change evidenced that women were capable of performing similar roles to men. Such
responsibilities justified claims of citizenship. One example of this was seen within the male-
dominated munitions trade. Women increased by three hundred per cent in government-
controlled establishment and 244 per cent in chemicals by October 1916.[8] In this process,
women’s employment changed from being an indicator of what was wrong with the country to a patriotic contribution which ought to be celebrated. Women’s employment became accepted as patriotic because work, including that of the “munitionettes”, helped to lead Britain to victory. David Lloyd George (Prime Minister 1916-1922) alluded to this argument, saying: “It would have been utterly impossible for us to have waged a successful war had it not been for the skill and ardour, enthusiasm and industry which the women of this country have thrown into the war”.[9] Moreover, the 1918 Act was obtained because changes within women’s employment demonstrated, even momentarily, that women were able to carry out the same patriotic duties as men.
The war politicised the domestic sphere because the government encouraged women at home
to participate in the national effort. As a result of this, the war changed perceptions of women’s work and made claims about women’s service more relevant to the vote. The notion of “total war” indicated that victory would not be decided just in the trenches of Flanders but in the kitchens and households of Britain. Therefore, there was less of a difference between men in public life and women in the private domain. This brought in new ways of understanding politics and citizenship. Mayhall suggests that women were able to exercise their citizenship by caring for the “neglected at home, poor women and children”.[10] Whilst the pre-war suffrage movement highlighted the roles of women at home and in the local community, it was the First World War which brought a new recognition of housewives.
Motherhood became even more important after 1914 because many young men died at
war.[11] This may be important in helping us to understand how a franchise limited to women over the age of thirty could be reconciled with the idea that women had earned the vote through wartime service and made considerable sacrifices. Women as spenders and consumers grew more important with wartime rationing. This became an essential role because Germany imposed a submarine blockade in 1915, which reduced Britain to a food supply which would only last four months by 1917.[12] For this reason, suffrage claims were justified because women had as much as a role as men to play in helping the country from cajoling men into service to carrying out domestic jobs.[13] Moreover, the notion of “total war” accelerated the collapse already under way before the war in the distinction between the male-dominated “imperial” politics and feminine “domestic” politics. Thus, women were able to engage with important political. matters from their own home. Such contributions on the home front were pivotal to the war effort and made suffrage claims more relevant.
Pre-war anti-suffrage arguments were largely undermined by the war. This meant that electoral reform was accepted because there were fewer convincing arguments against enfranchising women. For example, Lord Curzon listed anti-suffrage arguments which were based upon the weakness of the female sex and the inability of women especially in a time of emergency.[14] Unlike the pre-war suffrage movement, such views were easily refuted by the war. Patriotic suffragists used the war to show their military utility and civic worth.[15] Whilst some of the pre-war suffrage movement used illegal tactics to draw attention to the cause, the war allowed for a new kind of militancy which was aligned with the state rather than against it. The Pankhurst’s family journal, Suffragette, (renamed Britannia) supported this view as “[a] platform for advocacy of military conscription, the war of attrition and the internment of enemy aliens”.[16] This is an example of how suffragists were not simply the passive beneficiaries of social changes going on around them. They worked to shape public perceptions and to annex the suffrage argument to those changes. For this reason, most women were not perceived as inactive pacifists during the war effort or violent lunatics from the pre-war period. This view was apparent in the press. Bingham argues that “the Mail tended to welcome the post-war re-evaluation of femininity and sought to keep up with its readers” rather than “criticising the young women ‘on every conceivable ground’” as it had done in the pre-war period.[17] Furthermore, patriotism evidenced the tireless efforts of thousands of women defending their country and offered women a powerful language which made their claims about women’s service more relevant to the vote.
The war helped to secure the 1918 Act because the period removed opposition to the suffrage
campaign. Former anti-suffragists Herbert Asquith (Prime Minister 1908-1916) and Earl Grey (Foreign Secretary 1905-1916) suggested that the vote should be awarded to women as a
reward for their participation in the war. Earl Grey argued this was due to their roles of
housewives and mothers.[18] Violet Markham was another anti-suffragist who dramatically
changed her views on suffrage. At the end of 1918, Markham said that “her old views were
mistaken” and women had “splendidly justified the new rights they [had] obtained”.[19] The
general consensus at the time, including among anti-suffragists, was that the war brought
dramatic change and provided ample justification for enfranchisement.[20] The First World War therefore helped to change attitudes around suffrage, reduced opposition and suggested that women had a crucial role in post-war reconstruction.[21]
Recent historiographical debates, particularly from contemporary feminist historians, have
rejected the idea that the vote was a reward for women.[22] Even Mary Macarthur, a suffragist at the time, pointed to a paradox in this logic. Macarthur highlighted that although “the vote was conceded to women on the ground of their services in the war”, the 1918 Act “excluded the vast majority of woman war-workers”.[23] The impact of this legislation, however, cannot be underestimated. Whilst full enfranchisement did not happen until 1928, the bill gave five million men and nine million women the right to vote, increasing the enfranchised population from twenty-three per cent to seventy-eight per cent.[24] In contrast to other historians, this essay has argued that the 1918 Act was achieved because patriotic service during the war justified the pre-war suffrage arguments around citizenship.
Overall, the First World War was more important than the pre-war suffrage movement in
securing the 1918 Representation of the People Act because it changed perceptions of women’s work and made claims about women’s service more relevant to the vote. Patriotism helped to unify the country and established women, in their homes and communities, as politically active citizens. This changed the basis of British citizenship, undermined anti-suffrage arguments and reduced opposition to the suffrage campaign. Because of this, women were able to manipulate war rhetoric and justify their pre-war suffrage arguments. In conclusion, the war shifted attitudes from thinking that women’s employment was an indicator of what was wrong with the country to seeing it as a patriotic contribution to be celebrated.
Notes
[1] Martin Pugh, Women and Women’s Movement in Britain, 1914-1959 (London: Macmillan Education, 1992), p. 8.
[2] Chris Cook, The Routledge Companion to Britain in the Nineteenth Century 1815–1914 (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 68.
[3] Stuart Ball, “The Conservative Party and the Impact of the 1918 Reform Act”, Parliamentary History, 37/1 (2018), p. 23; Penny Summerfield, “Women and War in the Twentieth Century” in JunePurvis (ed.) Women’s History Britain, 1850-1945 (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 317.
[4] Laura E. Nym Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in
Britain,1860-1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 46.
[5] Pugh, Women and Women’s Movement, p. 21.
[6] Sallie Heller Hogg, The Employment of Women in Great Britain 1891-1921 (Oxford: University of Oxford, 1967), p. 129.
[7] Spencer Tucker, Priscilla Mary Roberts, World War I: Encyclopedia (Volume 1) (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2005), p. 504; Pugh, Women and Women’s Movement, p. 22.
[8] Pugh, Women and Women’s Movement, p. 25.
[9] Bob Whitfield, The Extension of the Franchise, 1832-1931 (Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 2001), p. 167.
[10] Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement, pp. 117-118.
[11] Summerfield, “Women and War”, p. 310.
[12] Pugh, Women and Women’s Movement, p. 13.
[13] Nicoletta Gullace, The Blood of our Sons: Men, Women and the Renegotiation of British
Citizenship During the Great War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 3.
[14] Julia Bush, “The Anti-Suffrage Movement”, The British Library (2018) <https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles/the-anti-suffrage-movement> [Accessed 13 March 2020].
[15] Gullace, The Blood of our Sons, p. 6.
[16] Pugh, Women and Women’s Movement, p. 9.
[17] Adrian Bingham, “‘Stop the Flapper Vote Folly’: Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail, and the Equalization of the Franchise 1927-28”, Twentieth Century British History, 13/1 (2002), p. 31.
[18] Summerfield, “Women and War”, p. 317.
[19] Philippe Vervaecke, “Doing Great Public Work Privately: Female Antis in the Interwar Years”, in Julie V. Gottlieb and Richard Toye (eds.), The Aftermath of Suffrage: Women, Gender, and Politics in Britain, 1918-1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 113-114. [20] Vervaecke, “Doing Great Public Work”, pp. 113-114.
[21] Adrian Bingham, “Enfranchisement, Feminism and the Modern Woman: Debates in the British Popular Press, 1918-1939”, in Julie V. Gottlieb and Richard Toye (eds.), The Aftermath of Suffrage: Women, Gender, and Politics in Britain, 1918-1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 89.
[22] Sandra Stanley Holton, Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 183-229.
[23] Julie V. Gottlieb and Richard Toye, The Aftermath of Suffrage: Women, Gender, and Politics in Britain, 1918-1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 1.
[24] Gullace, The Blood of our Sons, p. 7.
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