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WOMENS VOTE IN BRITAIN : 1880-1914

I wish to throw light on this subject on the basis of a review of Suffrage


Outside Suffragism: Womens Vote in Britain, 1880 1914, Myriam
Boussabha - Bravard
Before delving on the book review per se, I wish to state a little background
on the subject
Background
Womens suffrage in the UK became a national movement in the 19th Century.
Women were banned from voting in Great Britain by the 1832 Reform Act and
the 1835 Municipal Corporation Act
But female activism had been encouraged on the basis of
1. service to party and to the male members,
2. while women were excluded from membership in keeping with the
liberal view of consent and participation could only be male in the
initial phases.
Both before and after 1832 establishing Womens suffrage on some level was
a political topic.
After 1872 that it would become a national movement with the formation of
the
1. National Society for Womens Suffrage and later the more
influential
2. National Union of Womens Societies (NUWSS) .
Authors Approach to the Subject
This collection of essays of Myriam Boussabha - Bravard systematically
explores
1. How a sample of political groupings not founded on womens
suffrage reacted and accommodated the issue of suffrage
within their official discourses and structures.
2. This book focuses on suffrage outside suffragism and how they
related to the Edwardian social and political fabric.
3. From the start, suffragism did not replace party affiliations. It offered
a parallel space or in Jrgen Habermass words competing public
sphere
4. Party affiliations and sympathies then determined the suffragist course
of action.
5. Party campaigns in which female activists were involved included
temperance, free school meals, working-class housing, maternity
benefit and child welfare etc.

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6. Formal parties claimed that suffrage was divisive
NATIONAL POLITICAL PARTIES AND WOMEN SUFFRAGE
The first part of this book is devoted to national parties and how they dealt with
womens suffrage in the years preceding 1914. Pat Thane for the Labour

Party, Linda Walker for the Liberal Party and Lori Maguire for the
Conservative Party discuss the changing statuses and roles of women in
them.
Labour Party

Was founded in 1900 as the Labour Representation Committee


(LRC), to fight for greater representation of working people in
Parliament
At this time only about 60 per cent of men, and, of course, no women
had the parliamentary vote.
LRC embraced a spectrum of views of many working-class women and
men the goal which was not only womens suffrage but the full adult
franchise, for women and men.
This created debates on women-focused issues among Labour women
and other suffragists in the leading suffrage organisations, such as
the National Union of Womens Suffrage Societies(NUWSS) founded in
1897 under Milicent Fawcett and its more militant (split from NUWSS
in 1903) the Womens Social and Political Union(WSPU) founded by
Emmeline Pankhurst focused direct action through violence to win
the vote.
Even later the Womens Labour League (WLL) was established well
into the Edwardian period, (an all-female organization) formed in 1906
as an autonomous organization of women to work for independent
Labour representation of women in Parliament and in all local bodies
implying a clear commitment to womens suffrage.
Affiliated to the Labour Party in 1908 it got the right to attend and vote
at party conferences despite coldness from the male leadership. The
WLL was almost the only gateway for women to access Labour Party
officialdom;
it dutifully adopted adult suffrage in 1911 to forward the aims of the
party.

Conservative Party And Liberal Party

The Liberals and the Conservatives had enrolled female activists into
support since the 1880s.
Female activism had been encouraged on the basis of service to
party, and to male members, while women were still excluded from
membership.
The Conservatives were diehard opposers of enfranchising women, yet
in 1883 the Conservative Primrose League set up that admitted

women in 1884, became the largest body of politicized women in the


nation.
On the other hand an organization of the Liberal party, Womens
Liberal Federation formed in 1886, formalized Liberal womens
activism at a national level in 1887 while the local Womens Liberal
Associations had sprung up from the early 1880s in keeping with a
liberal public sphere where consent and participation could only be
male.
Thus, female activists were refused integration into parties;
All these women wanted society to change so women could have
greater opportunities, but they made no fundamental re-examination
of womens role in society and also asserted that there was no real
conflict between traditional femininity and an improved status for
women.
CUWFA subscribed to constitutional methods and sought to clearly
distinguish themselves from the WSPU. Therefore, their tactics
consisted mainly of verbal persuasion and distribution of literature and
organise classes to educate women on political questions et cetera. Of
course, their high level of contacts ensured that their efforts reached
leading political figures. These tactics provided them to prevent the
presentation of The Party as anti-suffrage.
After 1907 the Conservative Women had heated discussions at
dinner parties, letter writing, peaceful marches and newspaper articles
can hardly be qualified as dramatic, but they did contribute to the
evolution of male politicians ideas and ultimately to the achievement
of equal voting rights.
Linda Walker highlights that the Liberal Partys women wing Womens
Liberal Association established in 1887, developed a political
programme which reflected the convergence of membership and ideas
with the broader womens movement, and which helped to shape the
direction of Radical thought in the 1890s and the policies of New
Liberalism after 1900.

Socialist Party

Prominence of women began to be felt from the 2 nd half of 19th century


and 20th century.
The womens vote and emancipation issues was marginalised to the
first step on the path to the overthrow of oppression of rich and
capitalist.
June Hannam -- Socialist women brought a new dimension to suffrage
politics by raising the specific concerns of working-class women and by
their emphasis on the need for a broad and democratic basis for the
franchise.
Suffrage politics played a key role in influencing the ways in which
socialist and labour women constructed a political identity for
themselves.

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WOMEN-ONLY VOLUNTARY ORGANISATIONS

Julia Bush and Gillian Scott describe women-only voluntary


organisations, the National Union of Women Workers and the
Womens Co-operative Guild and their aims.
One was mostly middle-class in outlook and approaches while the
other was mainly working-class.
Class is also at the core of June Hannams contribution on Bristol
socialists and Philippe Vervaeckes essay
on the Primrose
League.
Primrose League has been credited for easing the transition to female
suffrage and mass democracy after 1918 for the Conservative
machine.
They also show how the relations between local and national levels
could clash.
Both scholars suggest that the suffrage issue as generally sexual
politics proved more divisive than expected in political organizations,
however hard they denied its relevance.
MODIFYING STRUCTURES BASED ON WOMENS NEEDS

The last section of the book discusses how female members viewed
structure and tailored it to their needs as females beyond the suffrage
issue.
In this section Susan Trouv-Finding explains how women
teachers gradually controlled their union before 1914 but never
managed to set equal pay, for instance, at the top of their agenda.
Women teachers achieved control of their union but reluctantly
listened to sexual politics and usually discarded such issues as outside
the scope of their organisation.
In the last chapter, Lucy Delap discusses the connection between
suffragism and feminism of the 20th century for avant-garde
women

Conclusion

The 20th century, the Edwardian era, saw a loosening of Victorian


rigidity and complacency: women had more employment opportunities
and were more active.
Now the air as Emmline Pankhurst puts it, they viewed votes for
women no longer as "a right, but as a desperate necessity".
Many now began serving worldwide in the British Empire or in
Protestant missionary societies.

History had been documented well in Britain even on such social and
political issues in the 19th Century. This is a great take-away for
students of history like us.
Thank you

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