MRS. WARD AND THE SUFFRAGE QUESTION
Mrs. Ward, as is well known, did not believe in Women's Suffrage. She
had heard the subject discussed from her earliest days at Oxford, ever
since the time when the first Women's Petition for the vote was brought
to the House of Commons by Miss Garrett and Miss Emily Davies in 1866,
and John Stuart Mill moved his amendment to the Reform Bill of 1867. But
it did not greatly interest her. Her mind was set in other directions,
responding to the intellectual stimulus of Oxford rather in the field of
historical and religious inquiry and leading her on, as we have seen, to
her memorable "revolt from awe" in the matter of the Interpretation of
the Scriptures. Her group of friends at Oxford were hardly touched by
the Suffrage agitation; the movement for the Higher Education of Women,
in which Mrs. Ward bore so distinguished a part, was wholly unconnected
with it. Indeed it was the very success of this movement that helped to
convince Mrs. Ward that the right lines for women's advance lay, not in
the political agitation for the Suffrage, but in the broadening of
education, so as to fit her sex for the many tasks which were opening
out before it. But she had also an inborn dislike and distaste for the
type of agitation which, even in those early days, the Suffragists
carried on; for the "anti-Man" feeling that ran through it, and for the
type of woman--the "New Woman" as she was called in the eighties--who
gravitated towards its ranks. Her scholarly mind rejected many of the
Suffragist arguments as shallow and unproven, especially those which
concerned the economic condition of women, while the practical
co-operation between men and women that she saw all round her, both in
Oxford and afterwards in London, gave her the conviction that the
remaining disabilities of women might and would be removed in due course
by this road, rather than by a political turmoil which would only serve
to embitter the relations between them. In her eyes women were neither
better nor worse than men, but different; so different that neither they
nor the State would really be served by this attempt to press them into
a political machine which owed its development solely to the male sex.
In later years she had many close friends in the Suffrage camp, nor did
she ever lose those of her earlier days who were converted, but to the
end there remained a profound antipathy between her and the "feminist"
type of mind, with its crudities and extravagances--the type that was to
manifest itself so disastrously in later years among the "Suffragettes."
It was not that she wished her sex to remain aloof from the toil and
dust of the world, as her Positivist friends would have liked; rather
she felt it to be the duty of all educated women to work themselves to
the bone for the uplifting of women and children less fortunate than
themselves, and so to repay their debt to the community; but clamour for
their own "rights" was a different thing: ugly in itself, and likely to
lead, in her opinion, to a sex-war of very dubious outcome.
The first time that Mrs. Ward was drawn into the battle of the Suffrage
was on the occasion, early in 1889, of Lord Salisbury's much-trumpeted
conversion to it, when a Private Member's Bill[30] of the usual limited
type was before Parliament, and the Prime Minister's attitude appeared
to make it probable that the Bill might pass. Mrs. Creighton--then also
opposed to the Suffrage, though on somewhat different grounds from Mrs.
Ward's--Mr. Frederic Harrison, Mr. Knowles, and Mrs. Ward united in
organizing a movement of protest. It was decided at a meeting held at
Mr. Harrison's house in May that the signatures of women eminent in the
world of education, literature and public service should be invited to a
"Protest against the extension of the Parliamentary Franchise to Women,"
which Mrs. Ward had drawn up (with some assistance from Mrs. Creighton),
and which Mr. Knowles undertook to publish in the next month's
_Nineteenth Century_.
The arguments advanced in this _Protest_ are interesting as showing the
position from which Mrs. Ward hardly moved in the next thirty years,
though many of her original allies who signed it fell away and joined
the Suffrage camp. There is first the emphasis on the essentially
different functions of men and women:
"While desiring the fullest possible development of the powers,
energies and education of women, we believe that their work for the
State, and their responsibilities towards it, must always differ
essentially from those of men, and that therefore their share in
the working of the State machinery should be different from that
assigned to men." Women can never share in such labours as "the
working of the Army and Navy, all the heavy, laborious, fundamental
industries of the State, such as those of mines, metals and
railways, the management of commerce and finance, the service of
that merchant fleet on which our food supply depends.... Therefore
it is not just to give to women direct power of deciding questions
of Parliamentary policy, of war, of foreign or colonial affairs, of
commerce and finance equal to that possessed by men. We hold that
they already possess an influence on political matters fully
proportioned to the possible share of women in the political
activities of England."
At the same time the recent extensions of women's responsibilities, such
as their admission to the municipal vote and to membership of School
Boards, Boards of Guardians, etc., is warmly welcomed, "since here it is
possible for them not only to decide but to help in carrying out, and
judgment is therefore weighted by a true responsibility." Then comes a
denial of any widespread demand among women themselves for the
franchise, "as is always the case if a grievance is real and reform
necessary," and finally an argument on which Mrs. Ward continued to lay
much stress in after years, that of the steady removal of the reasonable
grievances of women by the existing machinery of a male Parliament.
"It is often urged that certain injustices of the law towards women
would be easily and quickly remedied were the political power of
the vote conceded to them; and that there are many wants,
especially among working women, which are now neglected, but which
the suffrage would enable them to press on public attention. We
reply that during the past half-century all the principal
injustices of the law towards women have been amended by means of
the existing constitutional machinery; and with regard to those
that remain, we see no signs of any unwillingness on the part of
Parliament to deal with them. On the contrary, we remark a growing
sensitiveness to the claims of women, and the rise of a new spirit
of justice and sympathy among men, answering to those advances made
by women in education, and the best kind of social influence, which
we have already noticed and welcomed. With regard to the business
or trade interests of women--here, again, we think it safer and
wiser to trust to organization and self-help on their own part, and
to the growth of a better public opinion among the men workers,
than to the exercise of a political right which may easily bring
women into direct and hasty conflict with men."
This feeling was evidently uppermost in her thoughts at that time, for
she wrote as early as January, 1889, to her sister-in-law, Miss Agnes
Ward:
"What _are_ these tremendous grievances women are still labouring
under, and for which the present Parliament is not likely to give
them redress? I believe in them as little as I believe now in the
grievances of the Irish tenant. There _were_ grievances, but by the
action of the parties concerned and their friends under the
existing system they have been practically removed. No doubt much
might be done to improve the condition of certain classes of women,
just as much might be done for that of certain classes of men, but
the world is indefinitely improveable, and I believe there is
little more chance of quickening the pace--wisely--with women's
suffrage than without it.... There is a great deal of championing
of women's suffrage going on which is not really serious. Mr.
Haldane, a Gladstonian member, said to me the other day, 'Oh, I
shall vote for it of course!--with this amendment, that it be
extended to married women, and in the intention of leading through
it to manhood suffrage.' But if many people treat it from this
point of view and avow it, the struggle is likely to be a good deal
hotter and tougher before we have done with it than it has ever
been yet.
"I should like to know John Morley's mind on the matter. He began
as an enthusiast and has now decided strongly against. So have
several other people whose opinion means a good deal to me. And as
to women, whether their lives have been hard or soft, I imagine
that when the danger _really_ comes, we shall be able to raise a
protest which will be a surprise to the other side."
In spite of the fact that the organizers of the _Protest_ were
handicapped by the natural reluctance of many of their warmest
supporters to take part in what seemed to them a "political agitation,"
and so to let their names appear in print,[31] they worked to such
purpose during the ten days that elapsed between the meeting at Mr.
Frederic Harrison's house and the going to press of the _Nineteenth
Century_ that 104 signatures were secured. They were regarded by their
contemporaries as the signatures either of "eminent women" or of
"superior persons," according to the bias of those who contemplated the
list. Posterity may be interested to know that they included such future
supporters of the Suffrage as Miss Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb),
Mrs. Creighton and Mrs. T. H. Green, while among women distinguished
either through their own work or their husbands' in many fields occur
the names of Mrs. Goschen, Lady Stanley of Alderley, Lady Frederick
Cavendish, Mrs. T. H. Huxley, Mrs. J. R. Green, Mrs. Max Müller, Mrs. W.
E. Forster, and Mrs. Arnold Toynbee.
Naturally the _Protest_ drew the Suffrage forces into the field. The
July number of the _Nineteenth Century_ contained two "Replies," from
Mrs. Fawcett and Mrs. Ashton Dilke, to which Mrs. Creighton in her turn
supplied a "Rejoinder." Meanwhile a form of signature to the _Protest_
had been circulated with the Review, and was supplied in large numbers
on demand, so that in the August number Mr. Knowles was enabled to print
twenty-seven pages of signatures to the statement that "The
enfranchisement of women would be a measure distasteful to the great
majority of women of the country--unnecessary--and mischievous both to
themselves and to the State." Mrs. Creighton's "Rejoinder" was regarded
on the Anti-Suffrage side as a dignified and worthy close to the
discussion. "The question has been laid to rest," wrote Mr. Harrison to
her, "for this generation, I feel sure." Nearly thirty years were indeed
to pass before the question was "laid to rest," though in a different
sense from Mr. Harrison's.
During the earlier part of that long period Mrs. Ward concerned herself
no further, in any public capacity, with the task of opposing the
Suffrage forces. Her own opinions were known and respected by her
friends of whatever party, while her growing interest in and knowledge
of social questions gave her an ever-increasing right to advocate them.
At Grosvenor Place the talk at luncheon or dinner-table would often play
round the dread subject in the freest manner, with a frequent appeal, in
those happy days, to ridicule as the deciding factor. Mrs. Ward was
particularly pleased with a dictum of John Morley's, "For Heaven's sake,
don't let us be the first to make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of
Europe!" which I remember hearing her quote from time to time; but on
this subject, as on all others, the atmosphere of the house was one of
liberty to all comers to air and express their opinions. Most of her own
family were of the Suffrage persuasion, especially her two sisters,
Julia and Ethel, but her children followed her lead--save one who, being
a member of a youthful debating society where the wisdom of nineteen ran
riot in speech and counter-speech, was told off one day to get up the
arguments in favour of Women's Suffrage and to open the debate; she got
them up with the energy of that terrible age, and remained a convert
ever afterwards.
The question, in fact, did not enter the region of practical politics
until the advent to power of the Liberal Government in December, 1905.
It was on the occasion of Campbell-Bannerman's great meeting at the
Albert Hall, before the election, that the portent of the Suffragette
first manifested itself in the form of a young woman who put
inconvenient questions to "C.-B.," in a strident voice, from the
orchestra, and was unmercifully hustled out by indignant stewards. It
was the beginning of eight years of tribulation. Mrs. Ward watched
through 1906 and 1907 the growing violences of these women with mingled
horror and satisfaction: horror at the unloveliness of their
proceedings and satisfaction at the feeling that an outraged public
would never yield to such clamour what they had refused to yield to
argument. She did not yet know the uses of democracy. But the
constitutional agitation was also making way during these years,
especially since it was known that Campbell-Bannerman himself was a
Suffragist, and even after his death Mr. Asquith announced to a
deputation of Liberal M.P.'s, in May, 1908, that if when the
Government's proposed Reform Bill was introduced, an amendment for the
extension of the franchise to women on democratic lines were moved to
it, his Government as a Government would not oppose such an amendment.
This announcement brought Women's Suffrage very definitely within the
bounds of practical politics, so that those who believed that the change
would be disastrous felt bound to exert themselves in rallying the
forces of opposition. Mrs. Ward had hardly returned from America before
Lord Cromer and other prominent Anti-Suffragists approached her with
regard to the starting of a society pledged to oppose the movement. They
knew well enough that no such counter-movement had any chance of success
without her active support, and they shrewdly augured that, once
captured, she would become the life and soul of it. Mrs. Ward groaned
but acquiesced, and thus in July of this year (1908) was born the
"Women's National Anti-Suffrage League," inaugurated at a meeting held
at the Westminster Palace Hotel on July 21.
In the long struggle that now opened it is easy to see that Mrs. Ward
was not really at her ease in conducting a movement of mere opposition
and denial. She did not enjoy it as she enjoyed her battles with the
L.C.C. for the pushing forward of her schemes for the children, yet she
felt that it was "laid upon her" and that there was no escape. "As
Gertrude says, it is all fiendish, but we feel we must do it," she wrote
after the inaugural meeting; but this feeling explains her imperative
desire to give a positive side to the movement by dwelling on the great
need for women's work on local bodies--a line of argument which was
mistrusted by many of her male supporters, one of whom, Lord James of
Hereford, had spoken passionately in the House of Lords against the Act
of 1907 for enabling women to sit on County or Borough Councils. But
Mrs. Ward had her way, so that when the programme of the Anti-Suffrage
League came out it was found to contain twin "Objects":
(_a_) To resist the proposal to admit women to the Parliamentary
Franchise and to Parliament; and
(_b_) To maintain the principle of the representation of women on
municipal and other bodies concerned with the domestic and social
affairs of the community.
This second "Object" was indeed the keystone of Mrs. Ward's fabric for
the useful employment of the energies and gifts of women, in a manner
suited to their special experience as well as conducive to the real
interests of the State. She called it somewhere the "enlarged
housekeeping" of the nation, and maintained that the need for women's
work and influence here was unlimited, whereas in the special
Parliamentary fields of foreign affairs, war and finance, women might
indeed have opinions, but opinions unsubstantiated by experience and
unbacked by the sanction of physical force. It is interesting to observe
how she conducts her case for a "forward policy" as regards Local
Government before her own supporters in the _Anti-Suffrage Review_
(July, 1910):
"There is no doubt that the appointment of a Local Government
Sub-Committee marks a certain new and definite stage in the
programme of our League. By some, perhaps, that stage will be
watched with a certain anxiety; while others will see in it the
fulfilment--so far as it goes--of delayed hopes, and the promise of
new strength. The anxiety is natural. For the task before the
League is long and strenuous, and that task in its first and most
essential aspect is a task of fight, a task of opposition. We are
here primarily to resist the imposition on women of the burden of
the parliamentary vote. And it is easily intelligible that those
who realize keenly the struggle before us may feel some alarm lest
anything should divert the energies of the League from its first
object, or lest those who are primarily interested in the fight
against the franchise should find themselves expected willy-nilly
to throw themselves into work for which they are less fitted, and
for which they care less.
"But if the anxiety is natural, the hope is natural too Many
members of the League believe that there are two ways of fighting
the franchise--a negative and a positive way. They believe that
while the more extreme and bigoted Suffragists can only be met by
an attitude of resolute and direct opposition to an unpatriotic
demand, there are in this country thousands of women,
Anti-Suffragist at heart, or still undecided, who may be attracted
to a positive and alternative programme, while they shrink from
meeting the Suffragist claim with a simple 'No.' Their mind and
judgment tell them that there are many things still to be done,
both for women, and the country, that women ought to be doing, and
if they are asked merely to acquiesce in the present state of
things, they rebel, and will in the end rather listen to Suffragist
persuasion and adopt Suffragist methods. But the recent action of
the executive opens to such women a new field of positive
action--without any interference with the old. How immeasurably
would the strength of the League be increased, say the advocates of
what has been called 'the forward policy,' if in every town or
district, where we have a branch, we had also a Local Government
Committee, affiliated not to the present W.L.G.S., which is a
simple branch of the Suffrage propaganda, but to the Women's
National Anti-Suffrage League! The women's local government
movement, which has been almost killed in the last two years by
Suffragist excesses and the wrath provoked by them in the nation,
would then pass over into the hands of those better able to use
without abusing it. Anti-Suffrage would profit, and the nation
also."
Mrs. Ward looked forward, indeed, to the regular organization of women's
work and influence on these lines, culminating in the election, by the
women members of local bodies, of a central committee in London which
would inevitably acquire immense influence on legislation as well as
administration in all matters affecting women and children. "Such a
Committee," she said to an American audience in 1908, "might easily be
strengthened by the addition to it of representatives from those
government offices most closely concerned with the administration of
laws concerning women and children; and no Government, in the case of
any new Bill before the House of Commons, could possibly afford to
ignore the strongly expressed opinion of such a committee, backed up as
it could easily be by agitation in the country. In this way, it seems to
me, all those questions of factory and sanitary legislation, which are
now being put forward as stalking-horses by the advocates of the
franchise, could be amply dealt with, without rushing us into the
dangers and the risks, in which the extension of the suffrage to women,
on the same terms as men, must ultimately land us."
This passage shows very clearly Mrs. Ward's belief in the duty of
educated women to work for their fellows. She did not by any means wish
them to sit at home all day with their embroidery frames, but looked
forward instead to the steady development of what she called women's
"legitimate influence" in politics--the influence of a sane and informed
opinion, working in collaboration with Parliament, which should not only
remove the remaining grievances and disabilities of women, but hold a
watching brief on all future legislation affecting their interests.
Decidedly Mrs. Ward was no democrat. She was willing to wear herself out
for Mrs. Smith, of Peabody Buildings, and her children, but she could
not believe that it would do Mrs. Smith any good to become the prey of
the political agitator.
Her activity in carrying on the Anti-Suffrage campaign from 1908 to 1914
was astonishing, considering how heavily burdened she was at the same
time with her literary work and with the constant pressure of her Play
Centres and Vacation Schools. She was practically the only woman speaker
of the first rank on her own side, except for the rare appearances in
public of Miss Violet Markham, so that the Branches of the Anti-Suffrage
League formed in the great towns were all anxious to have her to speak,
and she felt bound to accept a certain number of such invitations. She
went to Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield in 1909; she led a
deputation to Mr. Asquith in 1910 and another at a more critical moment
in December, 1911; she wrote a series of articles in the _Standard_ on
"The Case against Women's Suffrage" in October, 1911, besides carrying
on an active correspondence in _The Times_, as occasion arose, against
Lady Maclaren, Mrs. Fawcett, or Mr. Zangwill; she spoke at Newcastle,
Bristol and Oxford early in 1912, and at a great meeting in the Queen's
Hall, just before the fiasco of the Liberal Reform Bill, in January,
1913. At all these meetings the prospect of Suffragette interruptions
weighed upon her like a nightmare. The militant agitation was, however,
a very potent source of reinforcement to the Anti-Suffrage ranks
throughout this period, so that although Mrs. Ward groaned as a citizen
at every new device the Militants put forth for plaguing the community,
she rejoiced as an Anti-Suffragist. The most definite annoyance to which
she herself was subjected by the Suffragettes occurred at Bristol, where
she addressed a huge meeting in February, 1912, in company with Lord
Cromer and Mr. Charles Hobhouse, M.P. A devoted lady had found a place
of concealment among the organ-pipes behind the platform, from which
post of vantage, as the _Bristol Times_ put it, "she heard an excellent
recital of music at close quarters, and for a few minutes addressed a
vast meeting in a muffled voice which uttered indistinguishable words."
She and a number of her fellows were ejected after the usual unhappy
scrimmage, and Mrs. Ward and Mr. Hobhouse were allowed to proceed. But
whether in consequence of this or as a mere coincidence, the Bristol
Branch became one of the strongest of the League's off-shoots, devoting
itself, to Mrs. Ward's intense satisfaction, to much useful work on
local and municipal bodies.
Her opposition to Mrs. Fawcett's organization was, of course, conducted
on very different lines from this. Quite early in the campaign, in
February, 1909, a debate was arranged to take place at the Passmore
Edwards Settlement (under the auspices of the St. Pancras Branch of the
Women's Suffrage Society) between the two protagonists, Mrs. Ward and
Mrs. Fawcett. The organizers of the meeting were besieged with
applications for seats. Mrs. Ward reserved 150 for herself and the
Anti-Suffrage League, while about 300 went to the Suffrage Society, so
that the voting was a foregone conclusion; but the debate itself reached
a high level of excellence, though it suffered from the usual fault
which besets such tournaments--that the champions did not really _meet_
each other's arguments, but cantered on into the void, discharging their
ammunition and returning gracefully to their starting-points when time
was called.
"Surely," wrote Mrs. Ward afterwards to her old friend, Miss McKee,
the Chairman of the St. Pancras Suffrage Society, "surely you
don't think that Mrs. Fawcett answered my main contentions! Does
anyone deny the inequality of wage?--but what Mrs. Fawcett never
attempted to prove was how the vote could affect it. And why
compare doctor and nurse? Does not the doctor pay for a long and
costly training, while the nurse is paid her living at least from
the beginning? Would it not have been fairer to compare woman
doctor with man doctor, and then to show that under the L.C.C. at
the present moment medical appointments are open to both women and
men, and the salaries are equal?"
It could not be expected that such combatants would influence each
other, but Mrs. Ward's campaign went far to influence the doubting
multitude, torn by conflicting counsels, harassed by the Militants,
worried by accounts of prison tortures suffered by the "martyrettes,"
and generally bothered by the obscuring of the good old fight between
Liberals and Tories which the importation of the Suffrage into every
by-election caused. The Suffrage battle was indeed waged upon and around
the vile body of the Liberal Party in a very special degree from 1908 to
1914, for Mr. Asquith was Prime Minister, and Mr. Asquith--encouraged
thereto by every device of provocation and exasperation which the
Militants could spring upon him--was an Anti-Suffragist. Yet the
influence of his Suffragist colleagues and of the constitutional
agitation throughout the country was sufficient to induce him, in
November, 1911, to give a very favourable answer to a deputation
introduced by Mrs. Fawcett, who put to him a series of questions with
regard to the Reform Bill announced by the Government for the Session of
1912 and the possibility of adding Suffrage amendments to it. The
Suffragists withdrew with high hopes of a real measure of
enfranchisement in the ensuing year. But less than a month later Mr.
Asquith was receiving a similar deputation from the Anti-Suffrage
League, introduced by Lord Curzon and including Mrs. Ward, Miss Violet
Markham and Mr. McCallum Scott. His reply showed unmistakably that he
was exceedingly glad to have his hands strengthened by the "Antis" in
his own domestic camp, and he only begged them to carry on their crusade
with the utmost vigour, since "as an individual I am in entire agreement
with you that the grant of the parliamentary suffrage to women in this
country would be a political mistake of a very disastrous kind."
When the Session of 1912 opened it was evident that very strong
influences were at work within the walls of Parliament for the defeat of
the "Conciliation Bill," which was due to come up for Second Reading at
the end of March, and it is significant that Mrs. Ward was able to say,
at a meeting of the Oxford Branch of the Anti-Suffrage League held on
March 15, that "Woman Suffrage is in all probability killed for this
Session and this Parliament." The prophecy was partly fulfilled; like
the prayers of Homer's heroes, Zeus "heard part, and part he scattered
to the winds." At any rate, in the Session of 1912, not only was the
Conciliation Bill defeated on March 28, by fourteen votes (after its
very striking victory the year before), but the Suffrage amendments to
the Reform Bill never even came up for consideration. At the very end of
a long Session, that is in January, 1913, the Speaker ruled that the
Bill had been so seriously altered by the amendments regarding male
franchise already passed that it was not, in fact, the same Bill as had
received Second Reading, while there were also "other amendments
regarding female suffrage" to come which would make it still more
vitally different. For these reasons he directed the withdrawal of the
Bill. The fury of the Suffragists at the "trick" which had been played
them may be imagined, but apart from the sanctity of Mr. Speaker's
rulings I think it is evident that the lassitude and discouragement
about the Suffrage which pervaded the House of Commons at that time, and
which contributed to the withdrawal of the Bill, was largely due to the
recognition that there _was_ a considerable body of Anti-Suffrage
opinion in the country, both amongst men and women, the strength of
which had not been realized before Mrs. Ward began her campaign. Well
might she draw attention to this at a great meeting held at the Queen's
Hall on January 20, when it was still expected that the Suffrage
amendments would be moved:
"Naturally, I am reminded as I stand here, of all that has happened
in the four and a half years since our League was founded. All I
can tell you is, that we have put up a good fight; and I am amazed
at what we have been able to do. Just throw your minds back to
1908. The militant organization was fast over-running the country;
the cause of Women Suffrage had undoubtedly been pushed to the
front, and for the moment benefited by the immense advertisement it
had received; our ears were deafened by the noise and the shouting;
and it looked as though the Suffrage might suddenly be carried
before the country, the real country, had taken it seriously at
all. The Second Readings of various Franchise Bills had been
passed, and were still to be passed, by large majorities. There was
no organized opposition. Suffragist opinions were entrenched in the
universities and the schools, and between the ardour of the
Suffragists and the apathy of the nation generally the situation
was full of danger.
"What has happened since? An opposition, steadily growing in
importance and strength, has spread itself over the United Kingdom.
Men and women who had formerly supported the Suffrage, looked it in
the face, thought again and withdrew. Every item in the Suffragist
claim has been contested; every point in the Suffragist argument
has been investigated, and, as I think, overthrown. It is a great
deal more difficult to-day than it was then to go about vaguely and
passionately preaching that votes will raise wages in the ordinary
market--that nothing can be done for the parasitic trades and
sweated women without the women's vote--for what about the Trade
Boards Bill? or that nothing can be done to put down organized vice
without the women's vote--for what about the Criminal Law Amendment
Bill? or that nothing can be done to help and protect children,
without women's votes--for what about the Children's Act, the First
Offenders' Act, the new Children's Courts and the Children's
Probationary Officers, the vast growth of the Care Committees, and
all their beneficent work, due initially to the work of a woman,
Miss Margaret Frere?
"Witness, too, the increasing number of women on important
Commissions: University--Divorce--Insurance; the increasing respect
paid to women's opinions; the strengthening of trade unionism among
women; the steady rise in the average wage.
"No, the Suffragist argument that women are trampled on and
oppressed, and can do nothing without the vote, has crumbled in
their hands. It had but to be examined to be defeated.
"Meanwhile, the outrages and the excitement of the extreme
Suffragist campaign gave many people pause. Was it to this we were
committing English politics? Did not the whole development throw a
new and startling light on the effect of party politics--politics
so exciting as politics are bound to be in such a country as
England--on the nerves of women? Women as advisers, as auxiliaries,
as the disinterested volunteers of politics, we all know, and as
far as I am concerned, cordially welcome. But women fighting for
their own hands--fighting ultimately for the political control of
men in men's affairs--women in fierce and direct opposition to
men--that was new--that gave us, as the French say, furiously to
think!
"And now, the coming week will be critical enough, anxious enough;
but we all know that if any Suffrage amendment is carried in the
House, it can only be by a handful of votes--none of your
majorities of 160 or 170 as in the past.
"And our high _hope_ is that none will pass, that every Suffrage
amendment will be defeated.
"That state of things is the exact measure of what has been done by
us, the Anti-Suffrage party, to meet the Suffragist arguments and
to make the nation understand what such a revolution really
means--though I admit that Mrs. Pankhurst has done a good deal! It
is the exact measure of the national recoil since 1908, and if
fortune is on our side next week, we have only to carry on the
fight resolutely and steadily to the end in order finally to
convince the nation."
After the collapse of the Government Reform Bill just described, the
deadlock in the Parliamentary situation as regards Women's Suffrage
continued right down to the outbreak of the War. Mrs. Fawcett
transferred the allegiance of the National Union of Women's Suffrage
Societies to the Labour Party, the only party which was prepared to back
the principle of women's votes through thick and thin; the Militants
continually increased in numbers, agitation and violence, and Mrs. Ward
and her friends concentrated their energies more and more on the
positive side of their programme, that is on the active development of
women's work in Local Government. But it was a heavy burden. Mrs. Ward
felt, as she said in a speech at Oxford in 1912, that "it is a profound
saying that nothing is conquered until it is replaced. Before the
Suffrage movement can be finally defeated, or rather transformed, we who
are its opponents must not only have beaten and refuted the Suffrage
argument, but we must have succeeded in showing that there is a more
excellent way towards everything that the moderate Suffragist desires,
and we must have kindled in the minds, especially of the young, hopes
and ideals for women which may efface and supersede those which have
been held out to them by the leaders of the Suffrage army."
Her artistic imagination was already at work on the problem, for in 1913
she wrote her Suffrage novel, _Delia Blanchflower_, in which the reader
of to-day may still enjoy her closely observed study of the militant
temperament, in Gertrude Marvell and her village followers, while on
Delia herself, an ardent militant when the story opens, the gradual
effect is traced of the English traditions of quiet public service, as
exemplified--naturally!--in the person of the hero. Incidentally it may
here be remarked that Mrs. Ward always believed that her Anti-Suffrage
activities, culminating in the writing of this novel, had a markedly bad
effect on the circulation of her books. Certainly she was prepared to
suffer for her opinions, for the task of diverting and of carrying
forward the Women's Movement into other lines than those which led to
Westminster was one that was to wear her out prematurely, though her
gallant spirit never recognized its hopelessness.
Her organized attempt to give effect to these aspirations, in the
foundation (early in 1914) of the "Joint Advisory Council" between
Members of Parliament and Women Social Workers, arose out of the stand
which she made within the National Union of Women Workers[32] for the
neutrality of that body on the Suffrage question. The National Union was
bound by its constitution to favour "no one policy" in national affairs,
and many moderate Suffragists agreed with Mrs. Ward that sufficient _ad
hoc_ Societies existed already for carrying on the Suffrage campaign,
and that it would have been wiser for the National Union to remain
aloof from it altogether. But the feeling among the rank and file of the
Union was too strong for the Executive, so that in the autumn of 1912 a
Suffrage resolution was passed and sent up to the Prime Minister and all
Members of the House of Commons. Mrs. Ward protested, but suspended her
resignation until the next Annual Conference, which met at Hull in
October, 1913. There Mrs. Ward's resolutions were all voted down by the
Suffragist majority, so that she and some of her friends felt that they
had no choice but to secede from the Union, on the ground that its
original constitution had been violated. They drew up and sent to the
Press a Manifesto in which the following passage occurred:
"Under these circumstances it is proposed to enlarge and strengthen
the protest movement, and to provide it, if possible, with a new
centre and rallying-point for social work involving, probably,
active co-operation with a certain number of Members of Parliament,
who, on wholly neutral ground from which the question of Suffrage,
for or against, has been altogether excluded, desire the help and
advice of women in such legislation."
Mrs. Ward had, throughout the controversy, carried on an active and most
amicable correspondence with her old friend, Mrs. Creighton, the
President of the National Union of Women Workers, who had for some years
been a convert to Women's Suffrage, on the ground that, since women had
already, for good or ill, entered the political arena with their various
Party Associations, it would be more straight-forward to have them
inside than outside the political machine. Mrs. Ward now wrote to tell
her of the progress of her idea for a "Joint Advisory Committee":
"STOCKS,
"_December 18, 1913_.
..."The scheme has been shaping beyond my hopes, and will I hope,
be ready for publication before Parliament meets. What we have been
aiming at is a kind of Standing Committee composed equally of
Members from all parts of the House of Commons, and both sides of
the Suffrage question--and women of experience in social work. I do
not, I hope, at all disguise from myself the difficulties of the
project, and yet I feel that it _ought_ to be very useful, and to
develop into a permanent adjunct of the House of Commons. From this
Joint Committee the Suffrage question will be excluded, but it will
contain a dozen of the leading Suffragists in the House, which
ought, I think, to make it clear that it is no _Anti_
conspiracy!--but a bona-fide attempt to get Antis and Pros to work
together on really equal terms."
She was much gratified by the cordial response to her invitation on the
part of M.P.'s of all shades of opinion, while some seventy women--both
Suffragists and "Antis"--representing every field of social work,
presently joined the Committee. Naturally the reproach levelled against
it by those who did not believe in it was that the Committee was wholly
self-appointed, but Mrs. Ward replied that, self-appointed or not, it
was an instrument for _getting things done_, and that it would soon
prove its usefulness. Under the Chairmanship of Sir Charles Nicholson,
M.P., the Committee had held four meetings at the House of Commons
between April and July, 1914, and had got through a great deal of
practical work in the drafting of various amendments to Bills then
before the House, when the curtain was rung down on all such fruitful
and peaceable activities. Henceforth the guns were to speak, and such
things as the education of crippled children, or the pressing of a wider
qualification for women members of local bodies, were to disappear
within the shadow that fell over the whole country. So at least it
appeared at the time, but the Joint Advisory Council, like all really
practical bodies, survived the shock, and lived to devote to the special
questions arising from the War the experience gained in these first
meetings.
* * * * *
The last act in the drama of Women's Suffrage found Mrs. Ward, as usual,
active and on the alert, and still unconvinced of the necessity for the
measure, or, still more, of the competence of the Parliament of 1917 to
deal with it. It will be remembered that the question arose again on the
"Representation of the People Bill" which the Government felt bound to
bring in before the death of the existing Parliament in order to remedy
the crying injustices of registration which deprived most of the
fighting men and many of the munition workers of their votes. The
opportunity was seized by the Suffragists to press the claims of women
once more upon Parliament and public, and this time the response was
overwhelmingly favourable. The pluck and endurance shown by women in all
the multifarious activities of the War had brought the public round to
their side; the men at the front were believed to be in favour of it,
the militant outrages had ceased, and, last but not least, there was now
a lifelong Suffragist at the head of affairs. The Speaker's Conference,
which reported on January 27, 1917, decided "by a majority" that "some
measure of women's suffrage should be conferred." It was evident that
the current of opinion was setting strongly in favour of the women's
claim, but Mrs. Ward still felt it to be her duty to protest, and to
organize the latent opposition which certainly existed in the country.
She wrote an eloquent letter to _The Times_ in May, pointing out the
obvious truth that the country had not been consulted, that the existing
Parliament had twice rejected the measure and was now a mere rump, with
some 200 Members absent on war service; she denied in a passage of great
force the plea based on "equality of service" between men and women,
appealing to the grave-yards in France and Flanders which she had seen
with her own eyes, as evidence of the eternal _in_equality, and finally
she pleaded for a large extension of the women's _municipal_ vote, in
order to provide an electorate which might be consulted by Referendum.
The Referendum was in fact adopted by the now dwindling Anti-Suffrage
party in Parliament as their policy; but the House of Commons would have
none of it, and the Second Reading of the Bill, which included the
Suffrage clause, was carried by 329 to 40. It is obvious, of course,
that in an elective Assembly, when the members are once convinced that a
large increase in the electorate is about to be made, anxiety for their
seats will make them very chary of voting against the new electors.
Hence Mrs. Ward had to bewail many desertions. The Bill was finally
passed by the House of Commons on December 7; but there still remained
the Lords. Here the opposition was likely to be far more formidable, for
the Lords had no hungry electors waiting for them, nor were they so
susceptible as the Lower House to waves of sentiment such as that which
had overspread press and public in favour of Women's Suffrage. It was
here, therefore, that Mrs. Ward organized her last resistance. The
January _Nineteenth Century_ appeared with an article by her entitled
"Let Women Say," appealing to the Lords to insist on a Referendum, while
in the first week of January she (acting as Chairman of the National
League for Opposing Women's Suffrage) issued a Memorial to which she had
obtained the signatures of about 2,000 women war-workers, and sent it to
the press and to the Members of the House of Lords.
Lord Bryce wrote to her in response (January 8, 1918):
"MY DEAR MRS. WARD,--
Thank you for your admirable article and for the copy of the
Memorial, an effective reply to that of the Suffragist ladies. It
is an achievement to have secured so many signatures so
quickly--and this may be used effectively by Lord Balfour of
Burleigh, when he moves his Referendum Amendment. No one can yet
predict the result. Lord Loreburn will move the omission of the
earlier part of Clause IV to-morrow; and I suppose that if it is
defeated the Referendum issue will come next."
There were a large number of distinguished Peers, including Lords
Loreburn, Weardale, Halsbury, Plymouth, and Finlay, who were pledged to
oppose "Clause IV," but the rock on whom the Anti-Suffragists chiefly
relied was Lord Curzon. He was President of the National League for
Opposing Women's Suffrage. He was an important member of the Government.
His advice would sway the votes of large numbers of docile Peers. He
had, however, sent Mrs. Ward a verbal message through her son, whom he
met in the House on December 18, that his position in the Government
would make it impossible for him to _vote_ against the Clause: he would
be obliged to abstain. Still he continued in active communication with
Mrs. Ward, giving advice on the tactics to be pursued, and on December
30, 1917, wrote her a letter in which, after expressing admiration for
her _Nineteenth Century_ article, he added the words: "A letter (if
possible with the article) to the Peers a few days before the Clause
comes under consideration may bring up a good many to vote, and after
all that is what you want for the moment."
Lord Curzon gave no further warning to the Committee of the League that
he intended to pursue any different line of action from that recommended
here. It was still a question of "bringing the Peers up to vote," though
the Committee knew by this time that his own vote--on the formal ground
of his being Leader of the House of Lords--could not be given against
the Clause. What, then, was their astonishment, when on the decisive
day, January 10, 1918, after a speech in which Lord Curzon condemned the
principle of Women's Suffrage in unmeasured terms and announced that his
opposition to it was as strong as ever, he then turned to their
Lordships and advised them not to reject the Clause because it would
lead to a conflict with the other House "from which your Lordships would
not emerge with credit." The effect of the appeal was decisive; the
Clause passed the House of Lords by a majority of sixty-three.
Thus fell the Anti-Suffrage edifice, and Mrs. Ward and her friends were
left to nurse their wrath against their leader. A somewhat lengthy
correspondence in the _Morning Post_ followed, the echoes of which have
long since died away, and Mrs. Ward retired soon afterwards to Stocks.
Thence she wrote to Mrs. Creighton, on March 14, her little valediction
on the Suffrage question:
"Yes, I have had rather a bad time of headache and weariness
lately. The last lap of the Suffrage struggle was rather too much
for me. But I felt bound, under all the circumstances (I should not
have felt bound if the decision had been postponed till after the
War) as a patriot--or what I conceive to be a patriot--to fight to
the end, and I actually drafted the last amendment on which the
House of Lords voted. Well now, thank goodness, it is over, for a
while, though I see Mrs. Fawcett is still proposing to go on. Now
the question is what the women will do with their vote. I can only
hope that you and Mrs. Fawcett are right and that I am wrong."
Nine months later, the General Election of December, 1918, gave women
the opportunity of echoing their Prime Minister's sentiments that the
Kaiser should be brought to trial and that Germany should pay for the
cost of the War. Mrs. Ward did not record her vote, for purely local
reasons, but she had by this time adopted an attitude of quite
benevolent neutrality on the merits of the question. She had fought her
fight squarely and openly, and had finally been defeated by a
combination of circumstances to which no combatant need have been
ashamed of succumbing. To some of those who worked with her and who
watched her endless consideration for friend and foe alike, in office
and committee-room, who admired the breadth and versatility of her mind
and who shared her belief in the "alternative policy" for which she so
eloquently pleaded, it seemed that the failure of the Anti-Suffrage
campaign lay at the door of those who obstructed her within her own
walls, who could not understand her call to women to be up and doing,
and who opposed a mere blind _No_ to the youth and hope of the Suffrage
crusade.
Be that as it may, Mrs. Ward had no reason, in looking back, to be
otherwise than proud of her contribution to the great cause of women's
work and freedom in this country. From her earliest days she had
forwarded the cause of women's education. As her experience of life grew
ever richer and more pitiful she had pleaded with her sex, using all her
varied gifts of pen and speech, to give themselves, each in her degree,
to the service of her fellows, and of the children. Her own example was
never lacking to enforce the plea. Service, not "rights," was in effect
her watch-word. If she disbelieved in the efficacy of the vote to
achieve miracles, it was because she believed far more in the gradual
growth and efficacy of spiritual forces. The rule of the mob did not
attract her, especially if it were a female mob; she would have offered
it, instead, its fill of work and service. Perhaps it was too austere a
gospel for our day, and in the end she watched her country choose the
opposite path without bitterness, and even with some degree of hope. At
any rate she had done her part in laying before her countrywomen a
different ideal.