Chapter Eleven

How the Vote was Won

… the heroic patriotism of the women workers during the war had now made their claim irresistible.

(Lloyd George, writing after the granting of the vote to women in 1918)

At the outbreak of war in 1914 there seemed to be little prospect of women in the United Kingdom being given the parliamentary vote in the near future, and yet by 1916, there was cross-party agreement on the subject and even the Conservative-dominated Lords submitted tamely to passing a bill which gave over eight million women the vote.

When the war began in the summer of 1914, an election was due by the end of 1915. By 1915, however, the country was being governed by a wartime coalition and it would hardly have been possible to hold a general election with so many men fighting abroad. It was this that led to the need for an urgent reform of the franchise. As we have seen, for men the parliamentary vote was dependent on residence and property qualifications. Men had to have lived in the same place for a length of time before being able to register to vote. Since it was intended to hold an election as soon as the war ended, this would have meant, under the law as it stood, that all the soldiers and sailors returning home from active service overseas would effectively have been disenfranchised by virtue of their military service. Moreover, many of the young soldiers fighting in the trenches would not in any case have been entitled to vote, because they had been living with their parents and were not themselves householders.

Obviously, this was all absurd. Then again, what of those men who had been directed to carry out war work in another part of the country, rather than serving at the front? It would be unfair if they too were to be disenfranchised, just because they had served in factories and mines, rather than on the Western Front. This consideration of the men doing war work at home led some MPs to raise the question of the women who were doing exactly the same sort of work. Surely, it was only fair if they too should be given the vote? After all, they were doing the same work as men on behalf of their country.

We have examined a number of myths and misrepresentations about the struggle for female suffrage before the First World War. We come now to another of the dubious assertions that are often made – one presented in many books as an established fact – that women finally gained the vote because of the way the majority of them behaved during the war. It is sometimes claimed today, and it was certainly asserted during the First World War when the decision was being made, that women were eventually granted the parliamentary vote in this country because of the war work so many of them undertook. From this perspective, the franchise was awarded like a medal for all the labouring in munitions factories, nursing and working as bus conductors that women did, among many other things. This is almost certainly untrue.

Lloyd George wrote after the war that ‘the heroic patriotism of the women workers during the war had now made their claim irresistible’. Asquith said at the time that it was the efforts made by women in support of the war that had changed his mind about female suffrage. Yet the majority of the war work was undertaken by women under the age of 30. For instance, there were almost a million workers in the munitions factories, all, at least officially, aged between 18 and 30; although in fact at some factories over 60 per cent of women were under 18. So, if it was really the case that the efforts of those young women in their twenties, who had been taking over the men’s jobs while they were away on active service, changed Asquith’s mind, then one would have thought that they would have been given the vote in 1918. They were not. They were, in fact, specifically excluded from the franchise, as it was only for women over the age of 30. This was in contrast to the voting age for men, which was 21 at that time.

The idea that women were granted the vote as a reward for their war work provided a convenient excuse for politicians who had opposed female suffrage. The main sticking point, the desire not to appear to be giving in to the threat of violence, had gone. The Lords had been tamed and with the passing of the Parliament Act could no longer block the legislative programme of the Commons. The mood in the Commons had long been in favour of female franchise and so, with the terrorism ended, the way was now clear.

Of course, there were some politicians, men like Asquith, who had fought for years against the principle of women being allowed to vote in parliamentary elections and for them, the excuse of war work was very handy. Such men might otherwise have felt a little foolish if, after having strongly opposed votes for women for a decade or so, they suddenly announced that they had been wrong about this all along! By citing the contribution of women to the war, they were enabled to make a volte face, claiming that circumstances had changed so dramatically that they had been forced to change their views.

Having capitulated to the demand for the female franchise, it was necessary only to work out the fine details. Nobody in parliament was keen to see every woman suddenly given the vote, if that were to happen, then women would at once become a majority of the electorate. Instead, the same process by which men had gradually been enfranchised over the last 80 years or so would be followed, so it would be done in stages.

In 1916, Asquith set up a Speaker’s Conference on Electoral Reform. This consisted of backbench MPs from all the political parties. This committee hammered out a new framework for the franchise. Chaired by the Speaker of the House of Commons, the conference had 13 Conservative members, the same number of Liberals, 4 from the Labour Party and 4 Irish Nationalists. After meeting 26 times, they reported back to the Prime Minister in January, 1917. By that time, Asquith had resigned and been replaced by Lloyd George.

The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies arranged for a delegation of women to put the case to the conference for female suffrage. Emmeline Pankhurst, whose ability to fall out with everybody with whom she came into contact was legendary, refused to attend on the grounds that women’s suffrage was no longer an important issue, compared, that is, to winning the war. From 1914 onwards, Mrs Pankhurst seemed to lose all interest in women’s suffrage. When a group of representatives from all the main suffrage societies went to Downing Street to make some final remarks on the proposed legislation, they in turn refused to have Emmeline Pankhurst as a member of their deputation.

Lloyd George accepted in full the recommendations of the Speaker’s Conference, which were that practically all men over the age of 21 should have the vote, regardless of property qualifications. Some women, property owners, the wives of property owners and university graduates over the age of 30 should also be given the vote. By the end of the year, the Representation of the People Act had been passed by the Commons by 364 votes in favour to 23 against. The House of Lords, not wishing for another confrontation with the Commons, also passed the bill. It became law in February 1918.

When women were finally given the parliamentary vote, it was on the terms of neither universal nor equal suffrage. Nevertheless, it was a start and ten years later, the law was changed so that both men and women had the vote on equal terms.

If women were not really granted the vote as a reward for their war service, and the fact that younger women and many working-class women were not enfranchised makes it very likely that they were not, what was the real reason for the change of heart, even in men like Asquith? It is instructive to look at what was happening in other countries in the years prior to and immediately following the end of the First World War.

Before the start of the First World War, New Zealand, Australia, Finland, Norway and some states of the USA had already given the vote to women. During and after the war, many more countries were to do so: Denmark in 1915; Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Russia in 1917; Germany, Hungary and Lithuania in 1918; Austria, the Netherlands and South Rhodesia in 1919; Czechoslovakia, Albania and the USA in 1920; and Burma and Ireland in 1922. Looked at from this perspective, Britain’s granting of the vote to some women in 1918 was simply a reflection of the trend that was sweeping the world. There had not been agitation for female suffrage in all the countries listed above, but this had not prevented the changes in the franchise being made.

At the outbreak of war in 1914, the question of women’s suffrage was off the political menu, at least until the violence ended. Since the only people undertaking violent actions in connection with the franchise for women were the members of the WSPU and as they had called an immediate halt to their activities when the war began, there was no longer any obstacle to considering the extension of the franchise. Other countries had already taken this step and more were moving in that direction and it would be absurd for the United Kingdom to be left behind.

With not just major nations like the United States giving the vote to women, but even small countries like Burma and Albania, to say nothing of neighbouring Ireland, Britain would have looked pretty foolish and out of step with worldwide political trends, had she not made at least some gesture towards the enfranchisement of women after the end of the war. This was particularly so when we bear in mind that colonial countries such as Canada, New Zealand, Rhodesia, Burma and Australia were also part of this movement towards greater democracy. It would have looked decidedly odd, with the rest of the empire moving in this direction, if the Mother Country alone had held out against women’s suffrage. By 1914, it was plain to most progressive and forward looking thinkers that women’s suffrage was coming to the countries of Western Europe and North America sooner, rather than later. All that Britain did was to follow a trend.

In the next chapter, we will examine what effect, if any, the activities of the WSPU had upon the granting of the vote to women. For many years, it was taken as being almost axiomatic that votes for women were achieved as a result of relentless campaigning by various suffrage groups, most notably the suffragettes of the WSPU. It is curious though to note that women in other countries gained the vote at about the same time without extensive lobbying, let alone conducting campaigns of bombing and fire-raising.

The popular feeling today is strongly in favour of the Pankhursts and their suffragettes having played a crucial role in gaining the parliamentary vote for women. It is no exaggeration to say that for most people, it is probably indisputable that the suffragettes forced the government to grant votes for women. It is time to look at the systematic distortion of history which has taken place over the last century and to see how the suffragettes were transformed from a gang of dangerous terrorists into a radical, mass movement struggling peacefully for civil rights.