THE WOMEN'S VICTORY—AND
AFTER
"When there is a fervent aspiration after better things, springing
from a strong feeling of human brotherhood and a firm belief in the
goodness and righteousness of God, such aspiration carries with it
an invincible confidence that somehow, somewhere, somewhen, it must
receive its complete fulfilment; for it is prompted by the Spirit
which fills and orders the Universe throughout its whole development."
J. B. MAYOR: _Virgil's Messianic Eclogue_.
[Illustration: "AT LAST!"
(Reproduced by special permission of the Proprietors of _Punch_.)
_Punch_, January 23, 1918.]
[_Frontispiece._
]
The Women's Victory—and
After: Personal
Reminiscences, 1911-1918
By Millicent Garrett Fawcett,
LL.D., once President, N.U.W.S.S.
London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.
_First published in 1920_
DEDICATORY PREFACE
TO THOSE WHO MADE THE DREAM COME TRUE
I wish to dedicate this little book to the thousands of faithful
friends and gallant comrades whose brave unwearied work, steadfastly
maintained through many years, made Women's Suffrage in Great Britain
no longer a dream but a reality. Many of them have passed away, but
their work, its results, and our gratitude remain. Whether in the flesh
or out of the flesh, I have been accustomed to think of them as the
Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets; for they foresaw what was coming,
proclaimed it, and devoted themselves in making it come in the right
way. All my gratitude goes out to them, especially to—
E.G.A. : C.C.O. : E.F.R. : I.O.F. :
A.G. : R.G. : E.P. : E.A. :
R.S. : E.G. : H.A. :
S.G. : I.H.W. :
E.I.
Through the kindness of the Proprietors of _Punch_, I am allowed to
use as illustrations some of their excellent pictures demonstrating
the growth of the suffrage movement. For this permission, and also
for their valued support and sympathy, continued over many years, my
heartfelt thanks are hereby tendered.
MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.
London,
_January, 1920_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE TWO DEPUTATIONS 1
II. THE DEFEAT OF THE CONCILIATION BILL 20
III. THE ELECTION FIGHTING FUND 30
IV. THE FIASCO OF THE GOVERNMENT REFORM BILL 39
V. THE PILGRIMAGE AND THE DERBY DAY, 1913 54
VI. THE TURN OF THE TIDE 68
VII. THE WORLD WAR AND WOMEN'S WAR WORK 86
VIII. WOMEN'S WAR WORK AS IT AFFECTED PUBLIC OPINION 106
IX. THE LAST PHASE 121
X. THE DIFFERENCE THE VOTE HAS MADE 156
APPENDIX 169
INDEX 173
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
(_Reproduced by special permission of the Proprietors of "Punch."_)
TO FACE PAGE
"AT LAST" _frontispiece_
THE CATCH OF THE SEASON 16
A PLEASURE DEFERRED 52
PRO PATRIA 113
THE MAN OF THE WORLD 117
THE WOMEN'S VICTORY—AND AFTER
CHAPTER I
THE TWO DEPUTATIONS
"I have a passionate love for common justice and common sense."—SYDNEY
SMITH.
In 1911 I wrote a little book called "Women's Suffrage: a Short History
of a Great Movement." My intention in the following pages is to bring
my story up to February 6th, 1918, when the Royal Assent was given to
the Representation of the People Act, which for the first time placed
women on the register of parliamentary voters.
In 1911 I ended my book on a note of confidence. I felt quite sure
that we were going to win soon, but I did not the least foresee the
wonderful series of events which actually led to so complete and great
a victory.
Not that all the signs were favourable in 1911—very far from it. There
were many ominous clouds on the horizon, and one of the chief of them
was the known hostility of Mr. Asquith, then Prime Minister, and at
the zenith of his power. His acuteness and dexterity in offence and
defence were unrivalled, and most suffragists believed that he intended
to wreck our cause on the rocks of Adult Suffrage, for which there had
been no demand in the country.
In 1908, almost immediately after he became Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith
had announced his intention before the expiration of that Parliament to
bring in an Electoral Reform Bill; this Bill, he had declared, would
not include women; but he pledged his Government not officially to
oppose a woman suffrage amendment "if drafted on democratic lines."
The Parliament elected in 1906 with an overwhelming Liberal majority
was dissolved in 1909 without the fulfilment of this intention. There
were two General Elections in 1910 without the introduction of a Reform
Bill. But the suffrage societies continued without intermission to
keep up a tremendously active agitation for the enfranchisement of
women. The various methods employed have been sufficiently described
in my earlier book. It is enough here to state that a large majority
of Members of the House of Commons, belonging to all parties, were
pledged to support women's suffrage; that various private Members'
Bills for extending the franchise to women had passed their second
reading in the Commons every year since Mr. Asquith became Prime
Minister; that the strength of our support in the rank and file of
the Liberal—and also in the Conservative—Party was constantly growing,
and that the Labour Party had definitely placed the enfranchisement
of women upon its official programme. In January, 1913, immediately
after what will be hereafter described as the Franchise Bill fiasco of
Mr. Asquith's Government, the Labour Party, at its annual conference,
passed by an enormous majority a resolution reaffirming its support of
women's suffrage, and calling "upon the party in Parliament to oppose
any Franchise Bill in which women are not included." This was the
most signal service to our cause which had then been rendered by any
political party.
It was followed at the next meeting of the Trades Union Congress by the
adoption of the following resolution:
"That this meeting expresses its deep dissatisfaction with the
Government's treatment of the franchise question ... and protests
against the Prime Minister's failure to redeem his repeated pledges
to women, and calls upon the Parliamentary Committee to press for the
immediate enactment of a Government Reform Bill, which must include
the enfranchisement of women."
Over forty trade unions, including the most important, such as
the N.U.R. and the A.S.E., adopted resolutions supporting the
enfranchisement of women.
The formation of the Conciliation Committee in the House of Commons
in 1910 has been sufficiently described in my earlier book (p. 73).
Its object was to unite all suffragists in the House, and secure their
support for a suffrage Bill which was believed to represent their
greatest common measure. They decided that this would be found in a
Bill to enfranchise women householders—those women, in fact, who had
for about forty years been admitted to the local franchises. The Bill
was called the Conciliation Bill because it had reconciled differences
existing between various types of suffragists inside the House of
Commons.
In July, 1910, two days of the Government's time had been given for
a full-dress debate upon the Conciliation Bill. Hostile speeches
from Mr. Asquith and Mr. Austen Chamberlain, on the ground of their
complete opposition to all kinds of women's suffrage, were followed by
equally vehement and hostile speeches from Mr. Lloyd George and Mr.
Winston Churchill, on the ground that this particular Bill did not
go far enough, and was so drafted as not to admit of amendment. In
anticipation of, and during, the Parliamentary debate, _The Times_ came
out with a hostile article every day for nearly a fortnight, and its
columns contained numerous letters prophesying all kinds of horrors and
disasters which were to be expected if women were allowed to vote; many
were of the type satirized in "Rejected Addresses," "What fills the
Butchers' Shops with Large Blue Flies?" Notwithstanding all this, the
division on the Second Reading resulted in a majority of 110 for the
Bill, a far larger figure than the Government had been able to command
for any of its party measures.
On November 12th, in anticipation of the second General Election in
1910, Mr. Asquith gave a pledge in the House of Commons that his
Government would, if still in power, give facilities in the next
Parliament for "_proceeding effectively_" with a Bill to enfranchise
women if so framed as to permit of free amendment. The second General
Election of 1910 took place immediately after this, in December, and
again resulted in a majority for Mr. Asquith and the Liberal Party.
On the reassembling of the new House the Conciliation Bill Committee
was reformed, Lord Lytton and Mr. Brailsford again acting respectively
as chairman and hon. secretary. The Bill was redrafted on the same
lines as regards its provisions, but in a form which admitted of free
amendment. Our friends were lucky in the ballot, and the debate and
division taking place on May 5th, 1911, it was found that the majority
of 110 in 1910 had grown to a majority of 167 in 1911—only 88 Members
voting against it.
Militantism, or, as it would now be called, "direct action," had been
suspended from the beginning of 1911 in view of Mr. Asquith's promise
to grant time for "proceeding effectively" with all the stages of a
Suffrage Bill during that Session. It should be noted that these two
suffrage victories in the House of Commons in July, 1910, and May,
1911, had taken place, in each case, when Members were fresh from
contact with their constituencies after the General Elections of
January and December, 1910. The contrary was often most ignorantly, if
not maliciously, asserted by antisuffragists. After the big majority
for the Conciliation Bill in May, 1911, Mr. Lloyd George promised
that in the next Session a week of Government time should be given
for the Second Reading and further stages of the Bill, assuming, of
course, its having received a Second Reading. Sir Edward Grey further
explained the value of this offer, and said (June 1st, 1911) that
a definite opportunity had been promised to the House of Commons,
and that it was important that people should understand that it was
a "real opportunity," and "not a bogus offer." In a letter to Lord
Lytton, dated June 15th, Mr. Asquith endorsed what Sir Edward Grey (now
Viscount Grey of Fallodon) had said; and writing again on August 23rd,
he made it clear that his promise applied to the Conciliation Bill,
and not to any other women's suffrage measure. Therefore it was not
astonishing that suffragists of all shades of opinion had high hopes of
a real victory in the Session of 1912.
Then came, quite suddenly, a characteristic blow from Mr. Asquith. On
November 7th, 1911, in answer to a deputation of the People's Suffrage
Federation, introduced by Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., Mr. Asquith
stated that he intended to introduce an Electoral Reform Bill during
the coming Session of 1912. This Bill was to be on very wide lines; all
existing franchises were to be swept away, plural voting abolished,
and the period of residence materially reduced. The vote in this Bill
was, Mr. Asquith said, to be based on male citizenship. His exact words
were: "We believe a man's right to vote depends on his being a citizen,
and _primâ facie_ a man who is a citizen _of full age and competent
understanding_ ought to be entitled to a vote." When pressed by Mr.
Henderson to say what he intended to do about women, he dismissed the
inquiry with the curt remark that his opinions on the subject were well
known, and had suffered no modification or change during the last few
years.
The announcement made a tremendous stir, and not in suffrage circles
only. The women's point of view was strongly urged in many quarters,
and to an unprecedented extent by a large proportion of the general
Press throughout the country.
Our own paper, _The Common Cause_, pointed out the bad statesmanship
which acknowledged "the intolerable slur of disfranchisement" where men
were concerned, and professed a desire to extend the franchise to all
citizens of full age and competent understanding, and yet did nothing
to remove this intolerable slur from the women of the country, and thus
by implication accepted the theory that women should be held in the
bondage of perpetual nonage, and could never be rightly described as of
competent understanding.
If this attitude on Mr. Asquith's part was intended to provoke a
renewed outburst of militantism, it certainly had the desired effect.
Even the mildest and most pacific of suffragists felt that she had
received from the Prime Minister a personal insult. One of them, by
no means identified up to that time with militant tactics, wrote to
the Press that Mr. Asquith's words "had filled her with an impulse of
blind rage." Those who represented the constitutional suffrage movement
constantly felt themselves in face of a double danger—the discredit to
their movement of the window smashing and other unjustifiable methods
of violence, and the continued and often very subtle opposition of the
head of the party most identified with the advocacy of parliamentary
reform.
The joint deputation of all the suffrage societies to Mr. Asquith on
November 18th, 1911, has been sufficiently described in what I call my
first volume. I may, however, here be allowed to repeat that, on behalf
of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, four categorical
questions were then put to Mr. Asquith:
1. Was it the intention of the Government that the Reform Bill should
be passed through all its stages in the Session of 1912?
2. Will the Bill be drafted in such a manner as to admit of amendments
introducing women on other terms than men?
3. Will the Government undertake not to oppose such amendments?
4. Will the Government regard any amendment enfranchising women which
is carried in the House of Commons as an integral part of the Bill, to
be defended by the Government in all its later stages?
To each of these questions Mr. Asquith gave the answer, absolutely
unqualified and unconditioned, "Certainly."
His whole attitude and manner were far more conciliatory than they
had ever been before, and, whether designedly or not, certainly had
the effect of strengthening our hopes of a speedy victory. Referring
to his own position, he said: "It is perfectly consistent with the
self-respect and the best traditions of our public life that in
relation to a question which divides parties, not only the head of the
Government, but the Government itself, should say that if the House
of Commons on its responsibility is prepared to transform or extend
a measure which we are agreed in thinking necessary—a measure for
the franchise as regards men—and to confer the franchise on women, we
shall not only acquiesce in that proposal, but we shall treat it as the
considered judgment of Parliament, and shall make ourselves responsible
for carrying it out."
What a contrast these suave words presented to Mr. Asquith's method of
receiving earlier suffrage deputations only those who had taken part in
both could fully appreciate.
Mr. Lloyd George was present, and was pressed by the deputation to
speak. He did so very briefly, and said: "I shall take the first
opportunity of setting forth my views in reference to this matter....
The only thing I would say now is this, and I say it after twenty-one
years' experience of Parliament: Do not commit yourselves too readily
to the statement that this is a trick upon women's suffrage. If you
find next year as a result of this 'trick' that several millions of
women have been added in a Bill to the franchise, that this Bill
has been sent to the House of Lords by the Government, and that the
Government stand by that Bill, whatever the Lords do,[1] then those who
have committed themselves to that ill-conditioned suggestion will look
very foolish."
That closed the deputation; but Mr. Lloyd George sent the following
message to the National Union almost immediately afterwards: "The
Prime Minister's pronouncement as to the attitude to be adopted by the
Government towards the question seems to me to make the carrying of a
women's suffrage amendment on broad democratic lines to next year's
Franchise Bill a certainty. I am willing to do all in my power to help
those who are labouring to reach a successful issue in the coming
Session. Next year provides the supreme opportunity, and nothing but
unwise handling of that chance can compass failure."
No doubt Mr. Lloyd George's reference to the risk of unwise handling
was directed to the suffragists themselves. But it was soon to be
proved that "unwise handling" was quite as likely to proceed from
the head of the Government. Mr. Asquith had received the suffragists
on November 18th. Twenty-six days after this, on December 14th, he
received an antisuffrage deputation. It was introduced by Lord Curzon,
and among those who spoke were Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Violet Markham,
and Sir C. Henry. Mr. MacCallum Scott, Member for Bridgeton, Glasgow,
was also present. In the course of his reply, Mr. Asquith made it quite
clear that his sympathies were entirely with the deputation; and he
encouraged them to put more vigour into their methods of opposing the
extension of the franchise to women, advising them "to take off their
coats," or whatever was "the equivalent raiment to which he should
allude when addressing ladies."
He also chaffed them genially about the Referendum, a subject on
which the deputation had not been able to agree among themselves. All
this was quite good sword-play, and no reasonable suffragists could
fairly object to it. But there was one passage in his reply to which
they did most vehemently object, as they felt that it went far to
render perfectly worthless the reassuring words he had addressed to
themselves about three weeks earlier. The words to which we objected
were these: "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_." How could a
Prime Minister reconcile it with his responsibility to his country to
acquiesce in and help to carry through all its stages in both Houses of
Parliament a constitutional change which he himself believed to be "a
political mistake of a very disastrous kind"?
One member of the antisuffrage deputation, Mr. MacCallum Scott, M.P.,
interpreted this expression of his political chief as an S.O.S. call
to his party, and in a letter addressed to the _Standard_ early in the
following Session he called upon his brother Liberal M.P.'s, whether
they were pledged to suffrage or not, to rally to the support of the
Prime Minister and to deliver him from "the humiliation" of having to
fulfil the promises he had made to the suffragists recounted in the
earlier pages of this chapter.
From this time every possible intrigue and trick and misrepresentation
were resorted to in order to defeat the suffragists when they next
submitted their question to the vote of the House of Commons.
Nevertheless, our strongest friends inside the Government continued to
be very confident. In December, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Asquith's Foreign
Secretary, and a very leading member of the Government, and Mr. Lloyd
George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, addressed a large meeting of
the Women's Liberal Federation in the Horticultural Hall, Westminster.
Sir Edward Grey spoke strongly and very reassuringly about the
practical certainty of the addition of women's suffrage to the coming
Government Reform Bill, and Mr. Lloyd George made an eloquent speech in
the same sense. The event proved them to have been entirely mistaken,
not through our blundering, but in consequence of serious mistakes made
by the Government itself.
Looking back over the last years of our struggle, we could not but see
that our chief antagonist was Mr. Asquith. Opposition from a Liberal,
with all the Liberal traditions of devotion to the principles of
representative government and a wide suffrage, was far more damaging
to our cause than opposition from Conservatives. It was Mr. Asquith,
more than any other one person, who prevented the Liberal Party
becoming a Reform Party, and including women in their general scheme
of enfranchisement. In 1906, very shortly after the unprecedented
Liberal triumph of that year, the Liberals returned were by an immense
majority supporters of the enfranchisement of women. Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman, the Prime Minister, was one of these, and received
a large representative suffrage deputation in May of that year. He
told them that they had made out a "conclusive and irrefutable case,"
but promised them no practical action whatever from the Government of
which he was the head; the only advice which he gave the deputation
was that they should go on "pestering." He evidently thought that
the best course for suffragists to pursue was to make themselves as
great a nuisance as possible until their claim was granted. There
must have been obstacles in his own Government which prevented his
giving us any more favourable answer, and there can be little doubt
that these obstacles were not so much to be found among the Harcourts
and the Hobhouses, but in the more formidable personality of his Home
Secretary, Mr. Asquith, who was destined, as events proved, within
less than two years to be his successor as Prime Minister. Mr. Asquith
had no grasp whatever of the significance of our movement. When what
was called "militancy" came upon the scene, very much encouraged, of
course, by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman's speech, he did not attribute it,
as he should have done, to the consequences of justice long delayed;
he saw nothing in it but a means of defeating the whole movement,
opportunities for covering its supporters with ridicule and himself
with additional prestige. Thus he would in a public speech compare
himself with Orpheus, and the whole suffrage party—for he then made no
distinction between militants and non-militants—with the wild women
of Thrace. We were "the rout that made the hideous war," and he, with
mock humility, our victim. He never really understood the social and
educational changes in the position of women which had been going on
for the last two generations, and made a corresponding change in their
political status an urgent necessity. One of his chief weapons against
us was this assumed inability to distinguish between the militants and
non-militants, and this was quite as much marked in the early stages
of the militant movement, when nothing more tragic had been done than
asking inconvenient questions at meetings, waving flags, and making
speeches in the lobby of the House, and so forth, as it was later, when
the militant movement became month by month increasingly aggressive
and dangerous. A statesman, whether in England, India, Ireland, or
Egypt, face to face with grave and persistent disorder, while taking
immediate steps to restore order, does not content himself with the
mere employment of physical force; he enquires into the moral causes of
the disorder, and seeks by wise legislation to remove them. This Mr.
Asquith never did in regard to women; for his eleventh hour conversion
to women's suffrage, although welcome, was more then for his own good
than ours. _Punch's_ picture of the "Conductorette" helping Mr. Asquith
into the suffrage bus, with the exclamation, "Come along, sir; better
late than never," exactly described his position in 1917.
[Illustration: THE CATCH OF THE SEASON.
_Conductorette_ (to Mr. Asquith): "Come along, sir; better late than
never."
(Reproduced by special permission of the Proprietors of _Punch_.)
_Punch_, April 4, 1917.]
[Facing page 16.
]
I well remember the long series of suffrage deputations which it
fell to my lot to introduce to Mr. Asquith, and his gradual change
of manner in receiving us. Some of the incidents of these interviews
were extremely amusing, and we laughed over them as soon as we were
by ourselves. The first was when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer
in Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Government. We had with us Miss
Emily Davies, the founder of Girton College; Lady Strachey, wife of
the well-known Indian administrator; Miss Frances Sterling; Miss I. O.
Ford; and other well-known suffrage leaders from our various societies.
While we were still in the waiting-room, I was sent for by myself
for a preliminary interview with Mr. Asquith's private secretary.
I found him a rather agitated-looking young man, who said: "I want
you, Mrs. Fawcett, to give me your personal word of honour that no
member of your deputation will employ physical violence." "Indeed,"
I replied, "you astonish me. I had no idea you were so frightened."
He instantly repudiated being frightened, and I rejoined: "Someone
must be frightened, or such a request would never have been made of
me; but as it is made, without hesitation I give you my most solemn
word of honour that no member of my deputation will either employ
or threaten violence." The idea of it, considering who they were,
entertained me, and I took no pains to conceal my amusement. I rejoined
my deputation, and almost instantly the gentleman I had just left
reappeared to conduct us to the reception room, I walking first, side
by side with the secretary. As we entered the room, where Mr. Asquith
was sitting with his back to the light on our right, I observed in
the opposite corner on our extreme left a lady I did not know. So I
said to the secretary in a clear voice, "I give no guarantee for that
lady; I do not know her." "Oh, that," he rejoined, and again showed
some agitation—"that lady is Miss Asquith." Members of the deputation
told me afterwards that they had also seen Mrs. Asquith sitting behind
her husband's chair, but I did not see her myself.[2] I remember the
extremely forbidding expression of Mr. Asquith's face, and how, after
a little, when I was speaking to him, I ceased to look at him on this
account, and looked at the space just above his head. Of course he gave
us no encouragement. One of his expressions was that he "had yet to
learn that there was any widely spread desire among women themselves
for their enfranchisement." A member of the deputation, Miss I. O.
Ford, of Leeds, who all her life had been very much in sympathy and in
constant communication with industrial women in the North of England,
replied to this, that if Mr. Asquith would come with her to meetings
of working-women in Yorkshire, she could show him that there were
thousands of women who keenly desired the vote. He replied, in his most
forbidding air: "The prospect does not greatly attract me."
This interview was a specimen of Mr. Asquith in his most hostile mood.
It was our lot to taste the insolence of office and the proud man's
contumely. It was part of our job. We rather resented being made a show
of for the benefit of his family; but this, after all, was a small
matter. His manner, possibly adopted to impress his wife and daughter,
was indicative of his deeply seated opposition to our aims, and it was
extremely interesting to watch how, by slow degrees, it was modified
until it became, even while he was still in opposition to us, cordial
and pleasant. Once, I remember, I could not resist saying to him that I
had never seen a man so much improved. But this was very near the time
when our victory was a certainty.