Woman Suffrage in Britain

This is not really an outline but moreso a list of ideas and terms. fear not, though, we'll get back to standard outlines with the Great War soon, very soon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUhwA-C-ACg


The argument of the broken pane of glass is the most valuable argument in modern politics.
Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, 16 February 1911.


Haven’t the Suffragettes the sense to see that the very worst way of campaigning for the vote is to try and intimidate a man into giving them what he would gladly give otherwise?
David Lloyd George, speaking in 1913.

Early Movement:

John Stuart Mill before Parliament: (1867)

The “simple question” was “whether there is any adequate justification for continuing to exclude an entire half of the community, not only from admission, but from the capability of being ever admitted within the pale of the Constitution, though they may fulfill all the conditions legally and constitutionally sufficient in every case but theirs.”

One objection in parliament: “a man qualified to possess the franchise would be ennobled by its possession. Women…would be debased and degraded by it.”

Key Organizations:

National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies (NUWSS)

Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU)



Arguments for and against Woman Suffrage:


“The sensation is most painful,” reported a victim in 1909. “The drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and breast. The tube is pushed down twenty inches; [it] must go below the breastbone.” The prisoners were generally fed a solution of milk and eggs. (London: National Women's Social and Political Union, ca. 1909. Library of Congress.)


With so much opposition, how do women gain the vote?
1. supporting the country during war
2. radical action
3. building coalitions with men


War:

Christable Pankhurst:
“You know, the weakness in this war is that too many have a bit of German in them. I believe that that is at the bottom of a good deal of pro-Germanism. Such men do not feel that repulsion from German thoughts, German ways, German deeds, and the whole of German civilization which the rest of us feel. To women, Germanism is abhorrent.”


Derby Day: Emily Davison, June 4, 1913
Anmer (the royal horse)


George Bernard Shaw:
“If I were a woman I’d simply refuse to speak to any man or do anything for men until I’d get the vote. I’d make my husband’s life a burden and everyday miserable generally. Women should have a revolution. They should shoot, kill, maim, destroy until they are given the vote.”


Victory:
Representation of the People Act of 1918
(electorate from 7.7 million to 21.4 million)