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
"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.