The Women's Victory—and After: Personal Reminiscences, 1911-1918 — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Women's Victory—and After: Personal Reminiscences, 1911-1918
John Stuart Mill · en
"This Bill does not propose to confer the franchise on women; whatever
extensions of the franchise it makes are to male persons only.
Speaking for myself, I cannot help remembering that the House at
an earlier stage of the Session rejected with, I think, sufficient
emphasis the proposal to confer the franchise on women; and, so far as
I am concerned, I dismiss at this moment as altogether improbable the
hypothesis that the House of Commons is likely to stultify itself by
reversing in the same Session the considered judgment at which it has
arrived."
That is to say, the rejection of the Conciliation Bill by a majority of
14 in the previous March was to be taken as "the considered judgment of
the House of Commons," whereas its passage in May, 1911, by a majority
of 167 counted for nothing at all. What the passage just quoted did
stand for was the continued and bitter hostility of the Prime Minister
to women's suffrage in any form, and as a renewal of his S.O.S. call
to his followers to come to his deliverance. The fortunes of all the
little politicians "in the make" are absolutely in the hands of the
Prime Minister—more so at that moment than perhaps at any other period
of our history. To please the Prime Minister and serve his purposes
indicated the road which led to success and preferment, and he made it
absolutely plain what was the best possible way to please him in this
matter of women's enfranchisement.
This was truly a time when we had "to go on dancing when the fiddle
stopped," and we did not decline the task. We held two immense meetings
in the Albert Hall, the combined collections at which totalled nearly
£13,000, and also organized an even more than usually vigorous
campaign throughout the country in support of the inclusion of women
in the Government Reform Bill; there were twenty-one by-elections
during the year, in all of which the N.U.W.S.S. took an active part,
making suffrage a very live issue in the country, and we also lost no
opportunity of raising the question in the House on other Bills which
came before it.