THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN BRITAIN, 1866-1928 The Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain, 1866-1928

Sophia A. van Wingerden

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Transferred to digital printing 2002 To my grandmothers,

Sophia Fox Kenamore and Johanna Wilhelmina Hendrika van Wingerden-Henkes Contents

Chronology x

Acknowledgements xx

List of Abbreviations XXI Preface xxii

1 Introduction 1 The Ladies' Petition 2 The Legal Position of Women 4 John Stuart Mill's Amendment to the Representation of the People Act 1867 9 Votes by Accident 17

2 Early Years - 1870 to 1884 22 Parliamentary Progress 26 Discord and Division: Contagious Diseases and Voting Wives 31 Progress for Women in the 1870s 37 Women's Suffrage - Pro and Con 40 The Free Trade Hall Demonstration in 49 Extra Cargo - the Reform Bill of 1884 51

3 The 'Doldrums' - Women's Suffrage 1885-1904 55 The 1890s 63

4 'Deeds, not Words!' the Women's Social and Political Union 70 The and the Courts 77 An Increase in Militancy 85

VII viii Contents

Political Prisoner Status and Forcible-Feeding 89 'The more they are imprisoned and punished the more they go on' 92

5 'Suffrage Ladies' and the 'Shrieking Sisterhood' 96 The Rift within the Lute 99 'If we were enfranchised, we should do much better' 101 Pretty 105

6 Quakers, Actresses, Gymnasts and other Suffragists 108 The Anti-Suffragists - 'A man, it is commonly felt, ought to be a man, and a woman a woman' 114

7 Conciliation 118 123 The Conciliation Bill in 1911 125 The Coronation Procession 127 The Conciliation Bill in 1912 129 The Reform Bill in 1913 134

8 Descent into Chaos 136 Splits - the Pethick-Lawrences Leave 141 1913 - War is Declared 142 The NUWSS and Labour 145 The East London Federation of Suffragettes 149 The Year 1914 150

9 Patriots and Feminists 154 August 4, 1914 154 Contents IX

Patriots or Feminists? The Impact of War on Feminist Ideology 158 The WSPU and the War 161 The ELFS and the War 163 Suffrage in Wartime 164 The Speaker's Conference - Suffrage Again 166

10 After the Vote was Won 172 NUWSS into NUSEC; WSPU into Women's Party 172 After the War was Won 176 The Cause 178

Notes 182 Bibliography 214 Index 224 Chronology

1792 Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1832 The Reform Act increases the male electorate to approximately 20 per cent of the adult male popula• tion. 1832 August Mary Smith petitions Parliament for the vote. 1835 The Municipal Corporation Act uses the word male, not person, which denies women the right to vote they had technically been allowed to exercise in the older boroughs. 1847 Anne Knight, a Quaker, issues a leaflet in favor of women's suffrage. 1850 Lord Brougham's Act, 13 & 14 Vict., c.21, §4 states that, unless explicitly specified otherwise, the term 'man' in Parliamentary statutes applies to women and men equally. 1851 The Sheffield Association for Female Suffrage is formed and produces a suffrage petition, which is presented to the . 1851 July Harriet Taylor Mill publishes 'The Enfranchisement of Women' in the Westminster Review. 1856 Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon et al., organize a committee to petition Parliament in favor of the Married Women's Property Bill. 1857 The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act authorizes divorce by the husband on a showing of adultery by the wife, and by the wife on a showing of adultery and cruelty by the husband. 1857 The Ladies Institute at Langham Place is founded. 1858 The Langham Place group founds The English Woman's Journal, later The Englishwoman's Review. 1860 The Langham Place group founds the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. 1865 The Kensington Ladies' Discussion Society is founded; after Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon leads a discussion on women's suffrage, a Women's Suffrage Committee is founded.

x Chronology Xl

1866 June and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson bring the 'Ladies' Petition' to Parliament. 1866 June John Stuart Mill and Henry Fawcett present the Ladies' Petition to the House of Commons. 1867 The second Reform Act increases the male elec• torate to approximately one-third of the adult male population. 1867 May John Stuart Mill proposes to amend the Reform Act by replacing the word 'man' by 'person'; his amendment is defeated by a majority of 123. 1867 July The London National Society for Women's Suf• frage is formed. 1867 August The Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage is founded. 1867 November A women's suffrage society is formed in Edin• burgh. 1867 November The National Society for Women's Suffrage is formed to coordinate the activities and policy of the women's suffrage groups. 1867 November After her accidental inclusion in the voting register, Lily Maxwell votes for Jacob Bright. 1868 Women's suffrage societies are founded in Bristol and Birmingham. 1868 The Court of Common Pleas hears Chorlton v. Ling. 1868 April The Manchester National Society for Women's Suf• frage holds the first ever public meeting on women's suffrage in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester. 1869 Jacob Bright's bill gives women the right to elect members to the municipal council in certain towns on the same terms as men; this right is extended to county councils in 1888 and to district councils in 1894. 1869 July The suffragists hold their first public meeting in London. 1869 November The General Election returns 90 friends of women's suffrage to Parliament. 1870 The Education Act enables women to elect mem• bers to school boards and to sit on school boards. 1870 The first of the Married Women's Property Acts allows women to keep any property or earnings acquired after marriage. xii Chronology

1870-83 During this time, a women's suffrage bill is intro• duced each year, with the exception of 1880, and defeated each year. 1872 The Ballot Act institutes the secret ballot for Parlia• mentary elections. 1872 Regina v. Harrald determines that only unmarried women ratepayers can exercise the local municipal vote. 1872 January The London organization for suffrage splits over the question whether to support Josephine Butler's anti• Contagious Diseases Acts campaign openly. 1873 May John Stuart Mill dies. 1874 The second of the Married Women's Property Acts allows the wife's creditors to reach the wife's property that went to the husband upon mar• riage. 1878 The London organization reunites. 1878 June Anti-suffragists systematically canvass against a women's suffrage bill. 1880 February A series of Demonstrations of Women is begun in Manchester. 1882 The third of the Married Women's Property Acts creates the concept of separate property for hus• bands and wives, allowing wives to hold all the property they had before and after marriage. 1883 The Contagious Diseases Acts are suspended. 1883 The Corrupt Practices Act outlaws payment for election campaign work. 1884 Gladstone's government introduces a Reform Bill to enfranchise agricultural workers. A women's suf• frage amendment thereto is rejected. 1885 The Women's Council of the Primrose League is founded. 1886 The Women's Liberal Association and Women's Liberal Unionist Association are founded. 1886-1904 The House of Commons votes only twice on the issue of women's suffrage during these years. 1888 Parliament passes the Local Government Act, creat• ing the County Councils. Chronology Xlii

1888 The Central Committee of the National Society for Women's Suffrage splits over the question of permit• ting political groups to affiliate with the suffrage societies. 1888 The Women's Liberal Unionist Association is founded. 1889 The Women's Franchise League, which includes and Josephine Butler, is formed. 1889 An appeal against women's suffrage, signed by 104 women, is published in the June issue of Nineteenth Century. 1891 Regina v. Jackson establishes that a husband cannot physically force his wife to live in his home. 1891 In De Souza v. Cobden the court establishes that women's right to vote for County Councils does not include the right to sit on them. 1893 The Independent Labour Party is founded. 1893 The Women's National Liberal Association splits with the Women's Liberal Federation over the ques• tion whether to work primarily for suffrage or the party. 1894 The passage of another Local Government Act effectively removes the barrier of coverture. 1895 Millicent Garrett Fawcett presides over a joint con• ference held by the two London-based suffrage organizations. 1896 July A Special Appeal for women's suffrage in The Eng• lishwoman's Review gathers 260,000 women's signa• tures, which are presented to Parliament. 1896 October Millicent Garrett Fawcett presides over the Birming• ham Conference, a meeting of 20 suffrage societies. 1897 October The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) is formed. 1899 Suffragists suspend their activities upon the out• break of the Boer War. 1902 The Women's Liberal Federation Executive takes the 'Cambridge Resolution', barring election help to anti-suffrage Liberal candidates. 1903 October The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) holds its first meeting. xiv Chronology

1904 May Mrs Pankhurst holds a protest meeting outside the Houses of Parliament in protest at the talk• ing-out of a women's suffrage bill. 1905 October and are arrested after asking questions at a political meet• ing in Manchester. 1906 The NUWSS organizes a deputation comprising 26 suffrage organizations and numbering more than 300 persons to Prime Minister Henry Camp• bell-Bannerman. 1906 The WSPU moves its base of operations to Lon• don. 1906 The coins the term '.' 1906 February The WSPU holds its first large London meeting, concluding with a deputation of women to the House of Commons. 1906 October Eleven WSPU members are arrested and impri• soned in Holloway. 1907 Approximately 130 suffragettes are arrested and imprisoned during this year. 1907 The Artists' Suffrage League is founded. 1907 The Men's League for Women's Suffrage IS founded. 1907 February The WSPU holds its first annual Women's Parlia• ment; the confrontation after the subsequent deputation to the House of Commons results in 50 arrests. 1907 February More than 3,000 women from 40 suffrage organi• zations march through London streets for the cause (the ''). 1907 September A group of suffragettes breaks with the WSPU to form the Women's Freedom League. 1908 The NUWSS makes a definite break with the WSPU after the suffragettes abandon their policy of suffering violence but using none. 1908 The Gymnastic Teachers' Suffrage Society is founded. 1908 The Suffrage Union (within the Women's Liberal Federation) is founded. Chronology xv

1908 The Women Writers' Suffrage League is formed. 1908 February The WSPU holds a three-day session of the annual Women's Parliament. 1908 February A women's suffrage bill passes a Second Reading by a majority of 179, marking the first time since 1897 that the House of Commons has acted favor• ably on a women's suffrage measure. 1908 June The NUWSS holds a procession of 10,000 women from 42 organizations in London. 1908 June The WSPU holds a meeting in Hyde Park; purple, green, and white become the colors of the Union. 1908 June Suffragettes Edith New and Mary Leigh throw stones through the windows of 10 . 1908 October The suffragettes invite the public to help rush the House of Commons. 1908 October Two Women's Freedom League members chain themselves to the grille of the Ladies' Gallery; officials have to remove the grille from the stone• work. 1908 October The suffragettes begin an organized campaign of heckling cabinet ministers. 1908 November The NUWSS publicly disavows the methods of the militants. 1909 The Hastings and St. Leonard's Women's Suf• frage Propaganda League is founded. 1909 The Scottish University Women's Suffrage Union is founded. 1909 The People's Suffrage Federation is founded. 1909 Leigh v. Gladstone et al. determines that forcible• feeding is permissible. 1909 February Suffragette deputations to Parliament result in the arrest of, inter alia, Lady Constance Lytton, who receives preferential treatment. 1909 March The Conservative and Unionist Women's Fran• chise Association is formed. 1909 July The Women's Freedom League keeps a 'Great Watch' outside the House of Commons. 1909 July The London Graduates' Union for Women's Suf• frage is founded. xvi Chronology

1909 July The imprisoned suffragette Marion Wallace Dun• lop hunger-strikes to protest at the Government's failure to grant women political prisoner status; she is released after 91 hours. 1909 September Prison authorities begin forcibly feeding hunger• striking suffragettes. 1909 December The NUWSS organizes a Voter's Petition, with more than 280,000 voters signing their names and addresses to this petition, for the General Election. 1910 The Women's Tax Resistance League is formed. 1910 January In the General Election, a Liberal government is returned with reduced majority. 1910 January The Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement is founded. 1910 January Lady Constance Lytton goes to prison disguised as 'Jane Warton' to prove that upper-class women receive preferential treatment. 1910 February A cross-party committee ofMPs is formed to draft a women's suffrage bill (the 'Conciliation Bill'). 1910 February Suffragettes declare a truce for the Conciliation Bill. 1910 March Political prisoner treatment is to be given to all whose crimes do not involve moral turpitude. 1910 June The Conciliation Bill is introduced into Parlia• ment. 1910 June The WSPU sponsors a march of 15,000 women in a two mile-long procession from the Embankment to Albert Hall to support the Conciliation Bill. 1910 June The NUWSS sponsors a meeting to support the Conciliation Bill. 1910 July A majority of 109 vote in favor of the Concilia• tion Bill; a majority of 145 refer the Bill to a Committee of Whole House. 1910 October The Free Church League for Women Suffrage is founded. 1910 November The WSPU truce ends on 'Black Friday.' 1911 The suffragettes resume their truce in honor of Coronation Year. 1911 April The suffragettes boycott the national census. Chronology xvii

1911 May The second Conciliation Bill survives its Second Reading by a majority of 167 and is referred to a Committee of the Whole House 1911 June The Catholic Women's Suffrage Society is founded. 1911 June All suffrage societies unite in a procession of 40,000 supporters for the coronation of George V. 1911 November The Civil Service Woman Suffrage Society is founded. 1911 November Asquith's announcement of a Manhood Suffrage Bill scuttles the suffragists' hopes for the Concilia• tion Bill. 1911 November Militant and constitutional suffragists join in a deputation to confront Asquith, who assures them that the Government will not oppose women's suffrage amendments to a reform bill. 1911 November More than 220 suffragettes are arrested during a demonstration to protest the announcement of a Manhood Suffrage Bill. 1912 The National Union adopts its Election Fighting Policy aimed at securing the inclusion of women in any government measure of franchise reform. 1912 March Militant suffragists smash windows in the West End. 1912 March The Scottish Churches' League for Woman Suf• frage is founded. 1912 March The third Conciliation Bill is defeated. 1912 March Following a second raid on West End shops, police raid WSPU headquarters. 1912 July The Women Teachers' Franchise Union is founded. 1912 October After Mrs Pankhurst outlines a new militant pol• icy for the WSPU, the Pethick-Lawrences break with the WSPU. 1912 October The Forward Cymric Suffrage Union is founded. 1912 November The Jewish League for Women Suffrage is founded. 1912 November The Federated Council of Suffrage Societies is founded. 1912 November The suffragettes embark on a campaign of damage to letter-boxes. XVIll Chronology

1913 Pankhurst and the East London Federa• tion of Suffragettes break off from the WSPU. 1913 January The Speaker of the House of Commons rules that a women's suffrage amendment to the Govern• ment's Reform Bill is out of order. 1913 February The NUWSS decides that no Government candi• dates, even pro-suffrage ones, will receive election help from the NUWSS. 1913 February The suffragettes burn down a refreshment kiosk in Regent's Park, the first incident in a program of damage to empty buildings. 1913 February Lloyd George's new house at Walton Heath is damaged by a bomb. 1913 April Mrs Pankhurst is sentenced at the Old Bailey to three years' penal servitude for the damage to Lloyd George's house. 1913 April Parliament passes the Prisoners' Temporary Dis• charge for III Health Bill, known as the 'Cat and Mouse Act.' Mrs Pankhurst is released under this Act. 1913 July The NUWSS' pilgrimage culminates in a demon• stration in Hyde Park. 1914 In the seven months preceding the outbreak of war, suffragettes are responsible for 107 incidents of arson, 11 of mutilation of works of art, and 14 other 'outrages'. 1914 August Britain enters World War I. 1915 March The Board of Trade issues an appeal for women to register for paid employment of any kind. 1915 April The Women's International League is formed at the Women's Peace Congress meeting in The Hague, the Netherlands. 1915 May The Election Fighting Fund is suspended. 1916 October An all-party conference meets to consider fran• chise reform for the unenfranchised fighting men. 1917 May The Representation of the People Bill, enfranchis• ing women, is introduced to the House of Com• mons. 1917 November The WSPU changes its name to the Women's Party. Chronology xix

1918 February The Representation of the People Bill becomes law; women over the age of 30 meeting certain property qualifications are enfranchised. 1918 November World War I ends. 1919 The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act abolishes disqualification by sex or marriage for entry to the professions, universities, and the exercise of any public function. 1923 The Matrimonial Causes Act relieves a wife peti• tioner of the necessity of proving cruelty in addi• tion to adultery as grounds for divorce. 1924 The Guardianship of Infants Act vests guardian• ship of infant children in the parents jointly. 1928 June The Representation of the People Act grants women the vote on the same terms as men. Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without the assistance of many librarians and others, to whom I am extremely grateful. Particular thanks are due to David Doughan and the staff of the Fawcett Library, Gail Cameron of the Museum of London and the staff of the Interna• tional Archief voor de Vrouwenbeweging in Amsterdam. I would also like to thank my parents for their encouragement, Desmond and Yvonne McCallum for their generosity and J. J. Gass for his yeoman efforts.

xx List of Abbreviations

AFL Actresses' Franchise League CD-Acts Contagious Diseases Acts EFF Election Fighting Fund ELFS East London Federation of Suffragettes IWSA International Woman Suffrage Alliance NUSEC National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship NUWSS National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies WFL Women's Freedom League WLF Women's Liberal Federation WSPU Women's Social and Political Union

XXI Preface

The history of the women's suffrage movement in Britain has popu• larly been associated with images of the Pankhurst family and the suffragettes, women such as Emily Wilding Davison, who flung herself to her death under the King's horse in the Derby of 1913, or the groups of women chaining themselves to railings outside Parliament, sacrifi• cing everything in protest at their unenfranchised state. Although accurate in themselves, the images do not offer a complete picture of the suffrage movement, but represent only one aspect - albeit an important one - thereof. In fact, the suffrage movement may be said to have begun in 1866, when a group of women as unlike the suffra• gettes as can be imagined presented a petition to Parliament, signed by 1,499 women asking for the vote, and did not end until 1928 - not 1914, with the outbreak of war, or 1918, with women's partial enfranchisement. Many suffrage books focus on a few years or a particular aspect of the suffrage movement, or consider that the suffrage movement ended with the outbreak of World War I or with the partial enfranchisement of women in 1918. While many historians have ably dissected and analyzed particular aspects of the women's suffrage movement, this book seeks to bring together the history of the suffrage movement by considering the campaign as a chronological whole. Specifically, it addresses itself to the beginnings of the organized campaign for the vote, tracing the campaign through its many, frequently turbulent, changes, until its relatively quiet end in 1928, when women were finally enfranchised on the same terms as men. It also tries to focus particular attention to those subject matters within the suffrage campaign that have not yet been given as much attention by historians as other areas, such as the relationship between the suffragettes and the courts, and the effect of World War I on the suffrage movement. In considering over half a century of suffrage history, this book necessarily glosses over many of the interesting theoretical and histor• ical questions that have been addressed by historians in recent years, such as the relationship between suffragists and party loyalties, the influence of reform politics, or the suffrage movement from the per• spective of those women not involved in one of the major organiza• tions. But by putting and keeping the movement within its own historical context, the various aspects of the campaign for votes for

xxii Preface XX11l women in their relationship to one another are clarified. The militancy of the suffragettes, for example, becomes understandable when set against the 40 seemingly unproductive years of work by the Victorian suffragists. This approach also highlights the tensions and contradic• tions within what may otherwise appear to have been a monolithic movement. The response of the suffragists to World War J, for instance, shows how feelings of patriotism and citizenship can come into conflict with the feminist principles underpinning the suffrage movement. Although the suffragettes brought votes for women to the attention of the public, for some 40 years prior to Christabel Pankhurst's impri• sonment for 'the cause' a group of suffragists had been working assiduously to secure some measure of female representation. Many early suffragists, in fact, believed the vote would be given to them quickly and painlessly. Yet both Parliament and the courts soon made it clear that women were not to be enfranchised without a struggle. During the remaining decades of the century, suffragists made repeated attempts to get a measure of women's suffrage passed by Parliament, but to no avail. Despite their lack of success, the nine• teenth-century women made progress in various other fields. Women's colleges at Oxford and Cambridge Universities were founded, women were permitted to take medical degrees, educational institutions for girls were established, married women acquired rights to hold property in their own names, and mothers gained rights of access to and control over their children. Women even obtained some limited political rights, such as the right to vote in municipal elections and to vote and sit on school boards. The Parliamentary franchise for women was one of the few goals that remained persistently elusive, and, by the turn of the century, this vote had become the focus of the women's movement. The Pankhursts' Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), it is said, was born out of a sense of frustration with the lack of progress made over the previous four decades' work for the vote, a feeling reflected in their motto, 'Deeds, Not Words.' The Pankhurst solution was to force the attention of the public and the politicians to the cause. Between 1905 and 1914, the suffragettes used militancy as their principal tactic in the campaign for votes for women, in contrast to the constitu• tionalist suffragists, whose methods had, during 40 years, never brought them into criminal court or even in contact with the police, although at the time and in their own way, the constitutionalists had been quite radical. The militants began, innocuously enough, by posing xxiv Preface questions at political meetings or gathering outside the Houses of Parliament, which initially provoked a violent response. But they soon recognized that such tactics could work only if their actions became more and more violent. Over the years, they employed arson and other means of destruction of property, for which the suffragettes are now remembered. The militants' tactics also resulted in criminal charges being brought against them. The presence of women political activists in court posed a problem for the magistrates, who were unaccustomed to dealing with this type of 'criminal.' Their responses are revealing of the more gen• eral attitude toward women in public life, women who broke with social convention, and women who, by virtue of their class and education, did not fit easily into the category of 'female criminal.' At first, the courts adopted a policy of leniency, giving the women a figurative rap on the knuckles and sending them home to their hus• bands or fathers. This satisfied neither the magistrates, who realized the failure of this policy when the same women re-appeared time and again, nor the suffragettes, who wanted to be taken seriously as rational actors who expected to suffer the consequences of their illegal actions. The women then attempted to rely upon the law to protect their protests, citing statutes that expressly permitted their public demonstrations, etc. This too failed, as the courts refused to accord women the benefit of the law. In addition to raising the same questions posed by the suffragists' earlier legal battle, the suffragettes' experience suggests new questions, about the responses to women in public life, the construction of woman as a criminal, and the class bias of the courts. Militancy was not popular with all suffragists. While many of the suffragists who had been associated with the women's movement in the nineteenth century joined the militants, others disagreed vehemently with the turn the suffrage movement had taken. Beyond condemning militancy as poor political strategy, many constitutionalist suffragists deplored the use of violence because it undermined the principles on which the suffrage movement was founded. Constitutionalists' argu• ments for women's suffrage rested on the idea that physical strength should not structure society; any movement based on that principle would never condone the violence of militancy. Militancy posed a threat to the suffragists' arguments that women would take a stand against war, exploitation of women and children, prostitution, and other social evils of primary concern to women. The goal of the WSPU, by contrast, was to redefine women in a way that appropriated Preface xxv how men had defined themselves by attempting to uncover women's 'hidden masculinity' to prove women's ability to enter the public sphere on the same and equal terms with men. The outbreak of World War I further brought into relief the differ• ences among suffragists made noticeable by the shades of disagreement between constitutionalists and militants. The war splintered the suf• frage movement and exposed the complexities of the conflicting claims of patriotism and . The suffragists who had previously con• sidered themselves outside the political and social structure were unsure whether to capitalize on the benefits of their new position as war workers or to remain outside the system even in times of national crisis. Women were divided over whether the bonds of an international sisterhood were stronger than their ties to men of the same nationality and class; they disagreed on whether citizenship implied loyalty to one's country first, regardless of the rights and wrongs of its actions, or whether they owed a loyalty to an abstract ideal of justice that could be derived from their work for the vote. Suffrage societies' responses to the Representation of the People Bill of 1917 reflected the impact of war on feminist ideology. The WSPU moved away from its toward a strain of , exemplified by its change of name to the Women's Party. They glorified the unity of all women, but ignored the fact that the bill did not enfranchise more than half of the female population. The constitutionalist National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) accepted their new role on male terms, somewhat neutral• izing the potential radicalism of their prewar views. The construction of the feminine as the politically progressive was lost as NUWSS members sought to gain ground in the male public sphere, working for political progress on masculine terms. They also ignored the bill's bias against working women; both the WSPU and the NUWSS's call• ing it a victory implies that the ties that bound them to the men of their class overrode the ties of sisterhood. Those who considered the bill a failure, however, did recognize that it maintained the economic oppres• sion of working women, and hence would not succeed as an instrument of social reform. Ironically, the women who became enfranchised had in the prewar days argued that the vote was necessary to prevent manipulation of the voteless feminine private sphere by the masculine public sphere - yet after their enfranchisement, they neglected the significant portion of the female population who remained at the mercy of capitalist and masculine exploitation, according to the socia• list feminists. xxvi Preface

In the 1920s, once women had become partially enfranchised, many of the more radical ideas of the prewar movement seem to have fallen by the wayside. Whatever their differences, the prewar suffragists had challenged traditional conceptions of womanhood, rejecting male con• trol and embracing the feminine as potentially politically progressive. To them, the vote was not just a 'scrap of paper,' but an instrument with which to counter the evils of an all too masculine government and effect wide-scale social reforms. In the 1920s, questions about what to do with their newly enfranchised status returned women to many of the issues first dealt with in the nineteenth century, not least of which was women's employment.