New Year 1911

New Year's Day: time to review the year that's passed. But why stick to this century? I wondered what kind of a year British feminists had had in 1910.

One with its ups and downs, it turns out. In July a bill that proposed giving the vote to large numbers of women was debated at length in Parliament. The report in Hansard (July 12 1910) makes strange reading: men debating whether women need or deserve a vote, whether their lives would be changed, whether the world would change -

"I cannot help thinking that there is some instability in our political system at present. I am quite certain that from time to time there are gusts of passion which sweep over the democracy, and I ask the House whether it would be wise to add to those a new and dangerous force of incalculable moment—I mean the collective emotion of women." (Mr. S. Butcher)

"I am asking for woman suffrage as a man, from a man's point of view, because I think it will be the best and the greatest reform we have ever had. I am asking for it for the sake of the country, for the sake of the men, as well as for the sake of the women." (Mr. Walter M'Laren)

"I do not want to roam into the abstract question of the relations between the sexes, their relative capacities and capabilities. I shall not go into that further than to say that I believe that there is a proportion of women capable of exercising the Parliamentary franchise, not merely for their own satisfaction, but to the public advantage, and I believe that that proportion of women is found in every class throughout the community. I believe the State would be the gainer if they had the vote, and if, in consequence of the vote, they had what I think myself follows from that—access in the fullest sense to all positions in our public life. I feel that the line of sex disqualification is not in accordance with obvious facts. I do not think it is necessary for the security of society. On the other hand, I think the grievance is greatly exaggerated. I think the great mass of women are not in any sensible degree losers by the disability under which they lie. It cannot be proved that they suffer any disadvantage in legislation." (Mr. Churchill)

"A slur of inferiority has been cast upon members of the other sex by hon. Gentlemen who have opposed this Bill. I think there is no inferiority whatever. One cannot but realise that members of the other sex have the gentler qualities much more marked; they transcend men in those qualities. They have also various qualities which fit them for assisting in local government matters. They have qualities which are virtuous in them, but which, in the male sex, would probably not be virtuous at all." (Mr. J.M.H. Kirkwood)

"The experience of Parliament has shown that these changes and reforms which [Stuart Mill] believed could not be accomplished without woman suffrage have, almost all of them, been carried." (Mr. S.H. Butcher)

The Bill was granted a second reading, but then dropped in the run-up to elections, on 18th November. Riots ensued, that day and later, as the Suffragette groups who had held off protests while the Bill was in Parliament resumed their activity and clashed with police. There were over a hundred arrests, and one protester later died of her injuries.

Other movements in feminism had seen continuation of gradual progress: it was the voting question that had been uppermost in the media in 1910.  What would 1911 hold?


(Thanks to the Women's Hour website for its handy timeline)