The Politics of Women’s Suffrage
Local, National and International Dimensions
9781912702961
9781912702954
Distributed for University of London Press
The Politics of Women’s Suffrage
Local, National and International Dimensions
A history of the early twentieth-century movement for women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
In the United Kingdom, the question of women’s suffrage represented the most substantial challenge to the constitution since 1832, seeking not only to expand but to redefine definitions of citizenship and power. At the same time, it was inseparable from other urgent contemporary political debates—the Irish question, the decline of the British Empire, the Great War, and the increasing demand for workers’ rights.
This collection positions women’s suffrage as central to, rather than separate from, these broader political discussions, demonstrating how they intersected and were mutually constitutive. In particular, this collection pays close attention to the issues of class and Empire which shaped this era. It demonstrates how campaigns for women’s rights were consciously and unconsciously played out, impacting attitudes to motherhood, spurring the radical “birth-strike” movement, and burgeoning communist sympathies in working-class communities around Britain and beyond.
In the United Kingdom, the question of women’s suffrage represented the most substantial challenge to the constitution since 1832, seeking not only to expand but to redefine definitions of citizenship and power. At the same time, it was inseparable from other urgent contemporary political debates—the Irish question, the decline of the British Empire, the Great War, and the increasing demand for workers’ rights.
This collection positions women’s suffrage as central to, rather than separate from, these broader political discussions, demonstrating how they intersected and were mutually constitutive. In particular, this collection pays close attention to the issues of class and Empire which shaped this era. It demonstrates how campaigns for women’s rights were consciously and unconsciously played out, impacting attitudes to motherhood, spurring the radical “birth-strike” movement, and burgeoning communist sympathies in working-class communities around Britain and beyond.
280 pages | 6.14 x 9.21 | © 2021
Institute of Historical Research
History: British and Irish History
Table of Contents
Foreword: The Women’s Movement, War, and the Vote: Some Reflections on 1918 and Its Aftermath
Susan Grayzel
Introduction
Alexandra Hughes-Johnson and Lyndsey Jenkins
I. Working within existing political structures
1. “‘[T]he success of every great movement had been largely due to the free and continuous exercise of the right to petition’: Irish Suffrage Petitioners and Parliamentarians in the Nineteenth Century
Jennifer Redmond
2. Singing The Red Flag for suffrage: gender, class and feminism in the Canning Town Branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1906-7 Lyndsey Jenkins
3. Suffrage Organizers, Local Women and the Campaign in Wales
Beth Jenkins
4. A “practical” politics? Suffrage, Infant Welfare and Women’s Politics in Walsall, 1910-1939
Anna Muggeridge
5. “Keep Your Eyes On Us Because There Is No More Napping”: The Wartime Suffrage Campaign of the Suffragettes of the WSPU and the Independent WSPU
Alexandra Hughes-Johnson
II. Working through social and cultural structures
6. English Girls’ High Schools and Women’s Suffrage
Helen Sunderland
7. ’A mistake to raise any controversial question at the present time’: the careful relationship of Glasgow’s suffragists with the press 1902-1918 Sarah Pedersen
8. “The Weakest Link”: Suffrage writing, class interests and the isolated woman of leisure
Sos Eltis
9. Militancy in the Marital Sphere: the birth-strike as a militant suffrage tactic
Tania Shew
III. Navigating international structures
10. Suffrage internationalism in practice: Dora Montefiore and the story of Finnish women’s enfranchisement
Karen Hunt
11. “East Side Londoners”: Sylvia Pankhurst’s lecture tours of North America and the East London Federation of Suffragettes
Kate Connelly
12. Emotions and Empire in Suffrage and Anti-Suffrage Politics: Britain, Ireland and Australia in the Early Twentieth Century
Sharon Crozier-De Rosa
13. From Votes for Women to World Revolution: British and Irish Suffragettes and International Communism, 1917-1939
Maurice Casey
Afterword: A Tale of Two Centennials: Suffrage, Suffragettes and the Limits of Political Participation
Nicoletta F. Gullace
Susan Grayzel
Introduction
Alexandra Hughes-Johnson and Lyndsey Jenkins
I. Working within existing political structures
1. “‘[T]he success of every great movement had been largely due to the free and continuous exercise of the right to petition’: Irish Suffrage Petitioners and Parliamentarians in the Nineteenth Century
Jennifer Redmond
2. Singing The Red Flag for suffrage: gender, class and feminism in the Canning Town Branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1906-7 Lyndsey Jenkins
3. Suffrage Organizers, Local Women and the Campaign in Wales
Beth Jenkins
4. A “practical” politics? Suffrage, Infant Welfare and Women’s Politics in Walsall, 1910-1939
Anna Muggeridge
5. “Keep Your Eyes On Us Because There Is No More Napping”: The Wartime Suffrage Campaign of the Suffragettes of the WSPU and the Independent WSPU
Alexandra Hughes-Johnson
II. Working through social and cultural structures
6. English Girls’ High Schools and Women’s Suffrage
Helen Sunderland
7. ’A mistake to raise any controversial question at the present time’: the careful relationship of Glasgow’s suffragists with the press 1902-1918 Sarah Pedersen
8. “The Weakest Link”: Suffrage writing, class interests and the isolated woman of leisure
Sos Eltis
9. Militancy in the Marital Sphere: the birth-strike as a militant suffrage tactic
Tania Shew
III. Navigating international structures
10. Suffrage internationalism in practice: Dora Montefiore and the story of Finnish women’s enfranchisement
Karen Hunt
11. “East Side Londoners”: Sylvia Pankhurst’s lecture tours of North America and the East London Federation of Suffragettes
Kate Connelly
12. Emotions and Empire in Suffrage and Anti-Suffrage Politics: Britain, Ireland and Australia in the Early Twentieth Century
Sharon Crozier-De Rosa
13. From Votes for Women to World Revolution: British and Irish Suffragettes and International Communism, 1917-1939
Maurice Casey
Afterword: A Tale of Two Centennials: Suffrage, Suffragettes and the Limits of Political Participation
Nicoletta F. Gullace