EP 01 - Trading with the Enemy

The Secret History of the Suffragettes

- Episode 01 -

Getting the vote in 1918 - the secret strategy

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The Secret History of the Suffragettes

Wednesday 23 February 2022

Getting the vote in 1918: the secret strategy LISTEN

Emmeline Pankhurst being arrested

We all know the militant Suffragettes won the vote for women

Everyone in Britain knows that women won the vote in 1918 because of the suffragettes. At the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, the British staged a pageant of their history – or what they imagined was their history. And there were the suffragettes, Emmeline Pankhurst and the women in their white dresses, their green, white and purple ribbons and their big hats.

They were the brave pioneers who chained themselves to railings, smashed windows, got arrested, went on hunger strike and were forcibly fed. They were the young women who worked in the munitions factories during the war. Votes for women was their victory.

Except that, when you look closer, it simply wasn’t. Votes were won in 1918 not by Mrs Pankhurst and the suffragettes, but by a completely different group of women (and a few men).

Episode 1 Getting the vote in 1918: the secret strategy on Apple podcast here

Olympic opening ceremony inspires many of the different associations that fought for women's votes to regroup for UK Feminista's women's rights rally on 24 October 2012

Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst told us they won women the vote

On 6 February 1918 the Representation of the People Act was given the King’s assent. It gave women the vote - but only if they were over 30 and either a householder/property owner, married to a householder, or a graduate of a British university. 8.4 million women - about 40% of the total female electorate. There was a long way still to go. But it was a major first victory.

On 23 February 1918 Emmeline Pankhurst and two other leaders of what had been the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) wrote to claim victory for the vote. ‘Votes for Women has been won,’ they wrote, ‘because the WSPU was blessed with marvellous leadership... it has won the greatest political victory on record.’

It was an extraordinary statement. Not only because the leaders gave most of the credit to themselves, but also because every word of it was untrue.

Episode 1 Getting the vote in 1918: the secret strategy on Soundcloud here

THE MYTH PERSISTS: Millicent Fawcett's importance is now taught at school and yet too much attention and credit is still given to the Suffragettes, despite recent historical evidence

The peaceful NUWSS Pilgrimage of Grace entering London on 26th July, 1913. An estimated 50,000 women reached Hyde Park that day from all across the UK.

The facts prove that the peaceful and yet tireless campaign by Millicent Fawcett, president of the much larger NUWSS, won the vote

Millicent Fawcett had been President of the vast umbrella organisation the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies since it began in 1897. At the start of the war in 1914 they'd stopped campaigning in favour of war work. But in March 1916, when there was talk that parliament would have to debate male suffrage because so many men were disenfranchised by being away at war, Millicent decided it was time to resume the campaign. By August 1916 the NUWSS had convened a conference of all organisations in favour of women's suffrage.

A journalist, back briefly from his work as a war correspondent, Henry Nevinson, was both an MP and a member of the United Suffragists - many of whom had left the Pankhurst WSPU in disgust at its tactics. And it was Nevinson who proposed parliament hold a Speaker’s Conference to discuss votes for men and women.

Behind the scenes Millicent Fawcett and sympathetic MPs devised a strategy to ensure that when the question of votes for women finally came up a way had been found to overcome all the objections that would inevitably be raised.

Meanwhile they held big public meetings to support the bill, and a campaign of mass petitioning among their societies, trades unions, trades councils, Co-operative guilds, Temperance Associations and many others. Millicent Fawcett at the age of 69 and suffering from bronchitis, did her best to tour the entire country. And it was Millicent Fawcett who lobbied every single member of the government.

Episode 1 Getting the vote in 1918: the secret strategy on Spotify here

The first and only statute of a woman in Parliament Square goes to Millicent Fawcett (whose colours, by the way, were berry red and leaf green)

No British government has ever given into terrorism. It was peaceful negotiation that won the vote. However dull that sounds

When the bill was passed in the Commons by a large majority, it was Millicent Fawcett who sat down and wrote a pamphlet urging the Lords not to turn it down. It would, she argued, simply create a Parliamentary crisis.

The vote was won by the NUWSS playing the political game with extreme skill and tact. Committed to peaceful negotiation, they pulled off a brilliant campaign. Just like the women of Austria, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet Union, who also peacefully won the vote at this time, it was achieved not by breaking windows or chaining anyone to anything.

But, we can hear some say, this is to take too short a view. Nothing in history is caused just by immediate events. You should look at the longer background. Surely, some will say, nobody would ever have thought of offering women any votes had the women not transformed their profile before the war - through the brave and dangerous protests, the hunger strikes and the force feeding of the Pankhursts and the suffragettes?

And what about the war work, getting women into the munitions factories? Surely that too was crucial? And surely that had everything to do with Emmeline Pankhurst?

Well, it did. But like everything else to do with the Pankhursts, it is not at all what it seems. As we discover at the History Café.

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