by imprisoned Suffragists and the events of Black Friday after the failed Conciliation Bill in 1910. 2 3 These events provided news coverage and awareness of the cause of
women’s suffrage but is minimised in the historical discourse by discussion of the
war effort. As Lucy Noakes argued, the War helped to formulate a popular memory of pre-war Britain that erased this controversial and radical history. 4 However, the
presence of a bill that included the potential for women’s first suffrage in Britain
contradicts the notion of mobilisation as a watershed moment. Whilst these bills
ultimately failed, other negotiations had progressed towards securing limited
enfranchisement. As Sandra Stanley Holton demonstrated, the work of non-militant
campaigners had potentially secured the introduction of female suffrage, within a larger electoral reform bill, if the Liberal party won the next election in 1915. 5 Whilst
Holton’s work relies heavily on speculation as the outbreak of War disrupted this
potential agreement from reaching fruition, what is most valuable is her
demonstration of women’s agency over the issue. Thus, women’s suffrage in 1918 was not ‘one of the surprises of the war,’ as Martin Pugh argued. 6 The momentum
towards enfranchising women remained, but as a secondary rather than primary
issue, due to the demands of War. Thus, the campaign for women’s suffrage was
continuous rather than reliant on a watershed moment.
The outbreak of War had a profound effect upon the Suffragette movement. Whilst the War had a unifying effect in many nationalistic ways. 7 It also highlighted
the underlying differences within the movement. The issue of the modernisation
thesis that the Suffragette campaigns and experiences highlight is that women are
not easily defined as a collective. This fragmentation of the suffrage movement only
serves to demonstrate the misrepresentations of it by the traditional interpretation.
Regardless of the attitudes of the different women’s suffrage groups to the War, it
cannot be argued that their commitment to the issue ended in 1914. As Angela K.
2 ‘Suffragists’ “Hunger Strike.”’, The Times , 13 April 1912, p. 11, The Times Digital Archive. 3 ‘Suffrage Raiders’, The Times , 19 November 1910, p. 10, The Times Digital Archive. 4 Lucy Noakes, ‘Demobilising the Military Woman: Constructions of Class and Gender in Britain after the First World War’, Gender & History , 19.1 (2007), 143 – 62 (p. 145). 5 Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘The Women’s - Suffrage Movement and the Impact of War’, in Feminism and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900 -1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 116 – 33 (p. 125). 6 Martin D. Pugh, ‘Politicians and the Woman’s Vote 1914–1918’, History , 59.197 (1974), 358 – 74 (p. 358). 7 Noakes, ‘Demobilising the Military Woman’, p. 143.
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