Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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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
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
Socialist Party
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WOMEN-ONLY VOLUNTARY ORGANISATIONS
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
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