Edexcel: C2: Britain, c.1860-1930: The Changing Position of Women and the Suffrage Question

SOURCE 1

On the whole, male politicians were by no means opposed to some form of female suffrage. The Labour Party supported it, and leading Labour figures like Keir Hardie and George Lansbury were deeply involved in the issue. A substantial section of the Liberal Party, quite possibly the majority, supported it, as did many leading Liberals, including Churchill, Lloyd George, and Sir Edward Grey. Although there was more opposition to it among the Conservatives, as was perhaps to be expected, a number of leading Conservatives supported it, including the party leader, Balfour.

From Sean Lang, Parliamentary reform, 1785–1928, published 1999

SOURCE 2

Bills for Woman’s Suffrage had been debated in Parliament since the reign of Queen Victoria. However, the question at issue was one which cut across the ordinary Party lines. Though they had support of many Liberals and many Conservatives, no Government of either party was ever found united in their favor and it became almost a convention of Parliament to block their progress.

From H.H. Asquith, Moments of Memory – Recollections and Impressions, published 1937

SOURCE 3

We have a political system where no reforms can get onto the statute book of our old country unless it is initiated by the government of the country, by the cabinet, by the handful of people who really govern the country. It doesn't matter whether you have practically every Member of Parliament on your side – you cannot get what you want unless the cabinet initiates legislation.

An extract from Emmeline Pankhurst’s speech ‘Freedom or Death’ given in Hartford, Connecticut on November 13 1913

SOURCE 4

It is frequently said that women were given the vote because of the war ... the highly skilled and dangerous work done by women during the war in the armaments and munitions factories and in the auxiliary and nursing service at the front was probably the greatest factor in the granting of the vote to women at the end of the war. Importantly too, the spectre of militancy was dead. Suffragettes had proved themselves worthy of the vote by working with the government in its fight to win the war.

From Paula Bartley, Votes for Women, published 2000

SOURCE 5

The enfranchisement of women involved greater issues than could be involved in any war, even supposing that the objects of the Great War were those alleged, I cannot help regretting that any justification was given for the popular error which still sometimes ascribes the victory of the suffrage cause, in 1918, to women's war service. This assumption is true only in so far as gratitude to women offered an excuse to the anti-suffragists in the Cabinet and elsewhere to climb down with some dignity from a position that had become untenable before the war.

From Evelyn Sharp, Unfinished Adventure, published 1933

SOURCE 6

The role played by so many thousands of women during the war may have played a part in obtaining the vote. But equally, it was a fear that women would return to the pre-1914 campaign of militancy that prompted politicians to act before the war was over.

From Angela K. Smith, Suffrage Discourse in Britain during the First World War, published 2005